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- PART ONE -

ANCIENT NIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

The Road to Death

Very little rain had fallen for a long time,for at least ten million years. Here, in theplace that one day would be called Africa, theman-apes of the grasslands were fighting abattle to stay alive, and they were notwinning.

About fifty of them lived in caves on theside of a small dry valley. There was a streamrunning down the middle. If the weather wasvery hot, its water dried up and the man-apes were thirsty.

When the first light of morning came in-to the cave, Moon-Watcher saw that his

father had died in the night. He did not knowthat the Old One was his father, because hedid not know what a father was. But he felt alittle anxious as he dragged the dead bodyout of the cave. Outside, he did somethingthat no other animal in the world could do -he stood up.

Moon-Watcher was bigger than the oth-ers in his group. He was nearly a meter and ahalf high, though very thin because of theconstant hunger. His hairy body was half-way between ape and man. But his headlooked quite human. His forehead was low,but there were signs of intelligence in hiseyes.

As he walked down the slope, the rest ofthe group saw him and began to come out oftheir caves. They moved towards the streamfor their morning drink. Moon-Watcherwalked on until he found a small bush. Heleft the body there, knowing that animals

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would do the rest. He never thought of hisfather again.

His two females, the adults from the oth-er cave, and most of the young ones werelooking for berries among the small treesfurther up the valley. Only the babies and thevery old were left in the caves. If there wasany extra food at the end of the day, theymight be fed. If not, they would stay hungry.

Moon-Watcher climbed the slope to jointhe group. After some time he found honeyin a dead tree. This did not happen very of-ten, and the group was happy. Of course,they also collected a number of bee stings,but they hardly noticed these. Now, althoughMoon-Watcher was still hungry, he was notactually weak with hunger. He could not ex-pect more than that.

He led his group back to the stream. TheOthers were there, as usual. There were

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about thirty of them, and they looked exactlythe same as Moon-Watcher's own group. Asthey saw him coming, they began to dance,shake their arms and shout, and his peopledid the same.

And that was all that happened. Al-though the man-apes sometimes foughtamong themselves, they could do little harmto each other. Their teeth were not sharp andtheir bodies were protected by thick hair.Also, they did not often have enough energyfor fighting. After a time, the man-apes onboth sides grew quiet and began to drink themuddy water.

On the grassland near the caves therewere many animals, but the man-apes knewof no way to kill one of them. In fact, theycould not even imagine the idea of killingone. In the middle of so much food, theywere slowly dying of hunger.

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That night a cold wind blew. Moon-Watcher hardly moved when the screamscame from one of the lower caves. He knewwhat was happening before he heard thesound of the leopard. But Moon-Watcher didnot think of going to help. He lay quietly, asall the others did.

Later, he went outside and sat on a rock.He looked up and down the valley, then atthe Moon. The man-apes were the only an-imal that ever did this. Moon-Watcher haddone it since his childhood. He was old now,twenty-five years old. If he was lucky, hemight live another ten years.

He stayed on the rock for some time,sleeping and waking but always listening. Ifany animal moved in the area, Moon-Watch-er would know about it. But he did not seethe bright light, brighter than any star, thatcrossed the sky twice, rising high and sinkingdown to the east.

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CHAPTER TWO

The New Rock

Late that night Moon-Watcher suddenlywoke up. He sat up in the darkness of thecave, looking out into the night, and fearentered his soul. He had never heard a soundlike this in his life. The big cats approachedin silence, except perhaps for the occasionalbreaking of a stick or a fall of earth. But thiswas a continuous crashing noise that grewsteadily louder. Even the elephants did notmake as much noise as this.

Then he heard a sound which he couldnot understand, because it had never beenheard before in the history of the world. Itwas the sound of metal hitting stone.

***

Moon-Watcher saw the New Rock whenhe led the group down to the river in the firstlight of morning. He had almost forgottenhis fear during the night, and did not connectthis strange thing with it.

It was three times his height, but whenhe reached out his hands to each side, it wasnot as wide. When he walked round andlooked at it from the side, it was quite thin.And he could see right through it. In fact, heonly knew it was there when the sunlightflashed on its edges. He put out his hand andtouched its cold surface.

It was a rock, of course, and it had grownduring the night. He knew of small roundplants that grew during the night and lookeda little like rocks. These tasted good, soMoon-Watcher put out his tongue and tastedthe new rock. A few seconds were enough tomake him understand that this thing was not

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food. So he continued on his way to the riverand soon forgot all about it.

In the last light of day, as the groupclimbed back towards the caves, the soundbegan. It was low and continuous. It camefrom the new rock, and they all stopped tolisten. Then they turned and, like sleep-walk-ers, began to move towards the rock. Theysat in a circle round the strange thing as thedarkness came down and a light grew insideit.

The noise grew louder and lights beganto flash and move, making patterns thatchanged all the time. The man-apes watched,their mouths open, not knowing that thething was examining their minds.

Suddenly one of them stood up. Hepicked up a piece of grass and tried to tie itinto a knot. His eyes were wide with terror ashe struggled to make his fingers do what they

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had never done before. He failed. The brokenpieces of grass fell to the ground and he frozeinto stillness again.

Another man-ape began to move. Thisone was younger and after some time it suc-ceeded. On the planet Earth the first knothad been tied.

Others did stranger things. Some heldtheir hands out and tried to touch their fin-gertips together. Some were made to stare atpatterns in the rock, watching lines whichbecame thinner and thinner until they couldnot be seen.

Moon-Watcher stood and picked up astone. Now on the new rock was a series ofcircles, each one smaller than the next. Thesmallest one was black inside. Obeying theinstructions in his brain, he threw the stone.He had never done this before, and hemissed by some distance.

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Try again, said the command. He foundanother stone and threw. It hit the edge ofthe rock and made a ringing sound. His thirdthrow hit the circles, only centimeters fromthe central black one. A strong feeling ofpleasure passed through his body.

One by one, every member of the groupwas tested and then allowed to feel eitherpleasure or pain. Then the light in the rockdied away. Shaking their heads, the man-apes got up and began to walk along the paththat led to their caves. They did not lookback at the strange light that was showingthem the way to their homes - and to an un-known future, perhaps even to the stars.

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CHAPTER THREE

Education

In the morning Moon-Watcher and hisgroup had no memories of what hadhappened the night before. When they wentout to find food, they hardly looked at thenew rock as they passed it. They could noteat it and it could not eat them, so it was notimportant.

But that night the noise from the newrock started again, and once again the groupwent to sit around it. This time it seemedonly interested in a few of the man-apes, andone of them was Moon-Watcher. Once againhe felt the thing exploring his mind, and thenhe began to see things. He saw a group ofman-apes resting near the entrance to a cave.The male, female and two young ones were

obviously eating well. They were quite fatand their hair was shiny. He put his hand onhis own thin body and thought about the dif-ference between himself and the picture inhis mind.

Later, as he sat outside the cave. Moon-Watcher felt the beginnings of a new emo-tion. For the first time, he felt unhappy withhis life and he wanted to change it. He hadtaken one small step towards being human.

Night after night the rock showed himthe four man-apes who were eating so well,and this made him feel even hungrier. Therock was helping this feeling to grow, be-cause it was changing the patterns in hisbrain. If he lived, these changes would bepassed on to his children.

It was slow work, but the rock was pa-tient. If it failed, there were other similarrocks doing the same thing across half of the

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world. A hundred failures would not matterif one success could change history.

***

As the line of wild pigs crossed the path,Moon-Watcher stopped suddenly. Pigs andman-apes had always ignored each other, be-cause they did not compete for the samefood.

But now Moon-Watcher stood looking atthem. Something was happening in his mindwhich he did not understand. He started tosearch the ground. He did not know what hewas looking for, but he would know it whenhe found it.

It was a heavy pointed stone about fif-teen centimeters long. As he swung his handround, puzzled by the increased weight, hefelt a new sense of power. He started to movetowards the nearest pig.

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It was a young and foolish animal, and itfelt no fear until much too late. It went onlooking for food in the grass until Moon-Watcber's hammer ended its life. The otherpigs continued to feed, because the murderhad been quick and silent.

The man-apes gathered round. One ofthem picked up the wet stone and began tohit the dead pig. Others helped with sticksand stones until the pig was a broken mess.

Then they became bored. Some walkedaway, others stood around the body, and thefuture of the world waited on their decision.It was quite a long time before one of theyoung mothers began to taste the stone shewas holding.

And it was even longer before Moon-Watcher, despite all he had been shown,really understood that he need never behungry again.

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CHAPTER FOUR

The Leopard

The tools they had been programmed touse were simple enough. There was thehand-held stone and the long bone. Withthese they could kill, but they neededsomething else, because their teeth and fin-gers could not pull apart any animal largerthan a rabbit. Luckily, Nature had providedthe perfect tool. It was simply the lower jaw-bone of an animal, with the teeth still inplace. There would be no great improvementon this until the invention of steel.

With these tools in their hands, theycould feed on the limitless food of the grass-lands and become the masters of the world.They accepted their new life easily, and did

not connect it with the rock that was stillstanding beside the path to the river.

However, the group still had occasionaldays when they failed to kill anything. At theend of one of these, coming back to the cavesempty-handed, they found a wild cow lyingby the path. Its front leg was broken, but itstill had plenty of fight left in it. Moon-Watcher's group circled the animal carefully,then moved in and killed it with their longbones and stones.

This took some time, and now it was get-ting dark. Moon-Watcher knew it would bedangerous to stay any longer. Then he had awonderful idea. He thought hard, and intime managed to imagine the cow - in thesafety of his own cave. He took its head andbegan to drag it along the path. The othersunderstood and helped him.

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The slope was steep and the animal washeavy, but eventually they got it inside thecave. As the last of the light left the sky. Theystarted to eat.

Hours later, his stomach full, Moon-Watcher suddenly woke up. At first he didnot know why, but then, from a long wayaway, he heard the sound of a falling stone.Afraid but curious, he moved to the entranceof the cave and looked down the slope.

Then he was so afraid that it was longseconds before he could move. Only sixmeters below, two shining golden eyes werestaring straight up at him. He was frozenwith fear and hardly saw the powerful bodybehind them, moving silently from rock torock. The leopard had never climbed so highbefore. It had ignored the lower caves andfollowed the smell of blood up the hillside.

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Seconds later, the night became noisy asthe other man-apes cried out in fear. Theleopard made an angry sound but it did notstop. It reached the entrance and rested for amoment. The smell of blood was all around.Then it came silently into the cave.

And here it made its first mistake, be-cause as it moved out of the moonlight, evenits night-hunter's eyes were at a disadvant-age. The man-apes could see it against themoonlight outside, but it could not see them.

The leopard knew that something waswrong when the first bone hit the side of itshead. It swung its front leg and heard ascream of pain as the leg struck soft flesh.Then something sharp went into its side -once, twice, and a third time. It turned roundto strike at the shadows dancing on all sides.

Something hard hit it across the nose. Itsteeth closed on a white object, but it was only

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dead bone. And now something was pullingits tail. It turned around, throwing its attack-er against the wall of the cave. But whateverit did, it could not escape the bones andstones that were hitting it from all sides. Thenoises it made turned from pain to fear andthen to terror. The hunter was now thehunted, and it was trying to escape.

And then it made its second mistake, be-cause in its fear it had forgotten where itwas. It ran straight out of the entrance athigh speed - too high for the steep slope. Itrolled and turned and cried as it fell. Therewas a heavy sound as it crashed into somerocks far below.

Moon-Watcher stood at the entrance tothe cave. He listened to the silence as the laststones stopped falling. Then he started toshout and dance, because he knew that hiswhole world had changed. A long time later,he went back into the cave and, for the first

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time in his life, he had an unbroken night'ssleep.

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CHAPTER FIVE

Meeting at Dawn

As he led the group down to the river inthe early morning. Moon-Watcher pauseduncertainly in a familiar place. The new rockhad left as mysteriously as it had appeared.Moon-Watcher tried to remember what hadbeen there, but could not. He put the prob-lem from his mind, and it never entered histhoughts again.

***

From their side of the stream, the Otherssaw Moon-Watcher and a dozen other malesmoving against the dawn sky. At once theybegan to shout and threaten in the usualway. But this time there was no answer.

Steadily and silently, Moon-Watcher'sgroup walked down the hill above the river,and as they approached, the Others wentquiet. Their pretended anger died away, andwas replaced by real fear. They saw the longbones and knives, but these did not alarmthem because they did not understand theirpurpose. But they knew that the group wasmoving in a new and different way.

For a moment Moon-Watcher stopped atthe water's edge. Then he raised his armshigh, showing what had been hidden by thehairy bodies of his companions. He washolding a thick branch, and on the end of itwas the head of the leopard. The mouth hadbeen fixed open with a stick, and the greatteeth shone white in the first light of therising sun.

Most of the Others were frozen with fear,but some began to move back. Still holdingthe bloody head up high, Moon-Watcher

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started to cross the stream, and the rest ofhis group followed him.

When Moon-Watcher reached the farside, the leader of the Others was still stand-ing in place. Moon-Watcher swung thebranch down on his head, and the leopardkilled one more time.

Screaming with fear, the Others ranaway in all directions. Moon-Watcher stoodlooking at the dead leader. Now he was mas-ter of the world, and he was not quite surewhat to do next.

But he would think of something.

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CHAPTER SIX

The Beginning of Man

There was a new animal on the planet,spreading slowly out from the African grass-lands. There were still very few of them, andthere was no reason to believe that theywould continue to live, where so many biggeranimals had failed.

In the hundred thousand years sinceMoon-Watcher had lived and died, the man-apes had invented nothing. But they hadstarted to change. Their great teeth were be-coming smaller, because they were not so ne-cessary now. The sharp-edged stones thatcould be used to dig out roots, or cut throughflesh, had begun to replace them. This meantthat the man-apes could still eat when theirteeth became damaged or old, and so they

lived longer. And as their teeth grew smaller,their jaws became shorter. The greater vari-ety of sounds they made were not speech, butspeech was now possible.

And then the world began to change.Four Ice Ages came and went, with two hun-dred thousand years between each of them.They killed much of the planets early life, in-cluding many man-apes. But those tool-makers who continued to live had been re-made by their own tools.

From using bones and stones, theirhands had learned new skills. And these al-lowed them to make better tools, which haddeveloped their hands and brains even more.The process of change became faster andfaster, and the result was Man. And some-where in that long period of time they hadlearned to speak. Now knowledge could bepassed from parent to child, so each new age

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could profit from the ones that had gonebefore.

Unlike the animals, who knew only thepresent, Man had discovered a past, and wasbeginning to look towards a future.

He was also learning to use the forces ofnature. When he discovered fire, he beganthe long process of technical change. In time,stone would be replaced by iron, and huntingwould change to farming. The group wouldbecome a village, and the village would growinto a town.

And as his body became more and moredefenseless, his power to attack becamemore frightening. With stone and iron hehad discovered many ways to kill, and quiteearly he learned how to kill from a distance.From thawing sticks and stones to droppingbombs, his power increased until it was greatenough to destroy the planet.

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If he had not had those weapons, Manwould never have become master of theworld. For ages they had served him well.

But now, as long as they existed, he wasliving on borrowed time.

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- PART TWO -

TMA-1

CHAPTER SEVEN

Special Flight

Dr Heywood Floyd had left Earth manytimes before, but as the moment of take-offapproached, he still felt nervous.

The jet that had rushed him here fromWashington, after that midnight meetingwith the President, was now dropping downtowards one of the most exciting parts of theworld. Here, along thirty kilometers of theFlorida coast, were the greatest structures ofthe Space Age. Near the horizon he could see

the shining silver tower of the last Saturn 5, amuseum now for twenty years. Not far awayfrom it stood the great building where all theearly ships had been built.

But these things now belonged to thepast, and he was flying towards the future.As his plane turned, he could see the space-plane in a pool of light, being prepared for itsflight to the stars. It seemed very small fromthis distance, until he looked at the tiny fig-ures all around it. Then he remembered that- it was more than sixty meters across thenarrow 'V' of its wings. And they were pre-paring this enormous machine just for him.

Though it was two o'clock in the morn-ing, a crowd of reporters and cameramenwere waiting for him when he stepped off theplane. But he could say nothing except 'nocomment' as he walked through them.

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The stewardess greeted him as heentered the spaceplane.

'Good morning, Dr Floyd. I'm Miss Sim-mons. I'd like to welcome you on board.'

He looked at the twenty empty seats. Onher advice, he chose the front one on the left,because it would offer the best view. He satdown, put on the safety belt and fixed his bagto the next seat. A moment later, the loud-speaker came on.

'Good morning,' Miss Simmons said.'This is Special Flight 3 to Space Station 1.'

It seemed she wanted to follow the nor-mal routine, and Dr Floyd smiled.

'Our flight time will be fifty-five minutes,and we will be weightless for thirty minutes.Please do not leave your seat until the safetylight is lit.'

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Floyd looked over his shoulder andcalled, 'Thank you.' She smiled, a littleembarrassed.

He leaned back in his seat and relaxed asthe Captains voice came through theloudspeaker.

'Take off in fifteen seconds. You will bemore comfortable if you start breathingdeeply.'

As the great machine left the ground, hefelt himself sinking deeper and deeper intohis seat. It was difficult to move, but therewas no real discomfort. In fact the bloodrushing round his body made him feel youngagain, and he wanted to sing aloud. This wascertainly possible, because no one could hearhim above the great noise of the engines.

His mood changed quickly as he realizedhe was leaving Earth and everything he had

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ever loved. Down there were his three chil-dren, motherless since his wife had died in aplane crash ten years ago.

The pressure and the noise both sud-denly decreased, and he heard the Captain'svoice again.

'Preparing to separate from lower stage.Here we go.'

There was a slight movement as the spa-ceplane freed itself from its carrier. Thelower stage would fly the sixteen thousandkilometers back to Florida, and it would thenbe prepared to lift another spaceplane awayfrom the Earth.

When the spaceplane's own engines star-ted, the speed increased only a little. In facthe felt no more than normal gravity. But itwas impossible to walk, since 'up' wasstraight towards the front of the plane. If he

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had been foolish enough to leave his seat, hewould have fallen right to the back.

It was an uncomfortable feeling, as if hisseat was fixed to a wall, with all the othersbelow him. He was trying to ignore it whendawn suddenly exploded outside.

In seconds they moved through layers ofred and pink and gold and blue into the shin-ing white light of day. Though the windowswere heavily colored to reduce the light.Floyd was still half-blinded for severalminutes. He was in space, but he could notsee the stars.

Then he felt his weight decreasing as thespaceplane levelled. The engines sloweddown and then fell silent, and they were inorbit. If he had not worn a safety belt, Floydwould have floated out of his seat; his stom-ach felt as if it wanted to do so anyway. Hehoped that the pills he had been given half

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an hour and fifteen thousand kilometers agowould do their work. He had been spacesickjust once in his career, and that was toooften.

The pilot's voice came through the loud-speaker. 'Please observe all zero gravityrules. We will be arriving at Space Station 1in forty-five minutes.'

The stewardess came walking up thenarrow passage to the right of the seats. Herfeet came off the carpet slowly, as if theywere stuck in glue. In fact she was walkingon the bright band of magnetic carpetingthat ran the full length of the floor - and ofthe ceiling. The bottoms of her shoes werealso magnetic.

'Would you like some coffee or tea, DrFloyd?' she asked cheerfully.

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'No, thank you,' he smiled. The plasticdrinking tubes always made him feel like ababy.

Miss Simmons stayed as he opened hisbag.

'Dr Floyd, may I ask you a question?'

'Certainly,' he answered, looking up overhis glasses.

'My boyfriend works at Tycho,' she said,'and I haven't heard from him for over aweek. Is it really true about illness on theMoon?'

'If it is, there's no need to worry. Re-member the illness in 1998? A lot of peoplewere sick, but no one died. And that's reallyall I can say.'

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She smiled pleasantly and straightenedup.

'Well, thank you anyway, Doctor. I'msorry to take up your time.'

'No problem at all,' he said, then openedhis bag and began to look through his end-less technical reports. There would be notime for reading when he got to the Moon.

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Space Station 1

'Half an hour later the pilot announced,'We make contact in ten minutes. Pleasecheck your safety belt.'

Floyd put away his papers. The last 500kilometers involved a lot of movement fromside to side as the spaceplane tried to get intoposition. It was best to sit back and relax.

A few minutes later he had his first sightof Space Station 1,300 meters across andturning slowly. Behind it was Earth. Fromhis height of 320 kilometers, he could seemuch of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean.

The central part of the Space Station wasnow coming towards them. Unlike the rest of

the structure, it was not turning. In this way,a spaceship could land on it without beingspun round.

Floyd felt the spaceplane make contact.A few seconds later, the airlock door openedand a man entered.

'Pleased to meet you, Dr Floyd. I'm NickMiller, Station Police. I'll look after you tillthe moonship leaves.'

They shook hands, then Floyd smiled atthe stewardess and said: 'Please give mythanks to the rest of the crew. Perhaps I'll seeyou on the way home.'

Very cautiously - it was more than a yearsince he had been weightless, and it would besome time before he got used to it - he pulledhimself hand over hand through the airlockand into the large circular room at the centerof the Space Station. The walls, floor and

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ceiling were covered with soft material, andthere were handholds here and there. Floydheld on to one of these firmly, while thewhole room started to turn until its speedwas the same as the Space Station.

As it went faster, he was gently pushedback, and now, instead of standing against acircular wall, Floyd was lying on a curvedfloor. He stood up. The force of the spin hadcreated artificial gravity. It was weak here,but would increase as he moved away fromthe center.

From the central room he followedMiller down curving stairs. At first he felt solight that he almost had to force himselfdownwards. He did not gain enough weightto move almost normally until he reachedthe passenger lounge, on the outside edge ofthe great turning circle.

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'Can I get you anything while we're wait-ing?' Miller said. 'We leave in about thirtyminutes.

'I'd like a cup of black coffee - twosugars.'

'Right, Doctor - I'll get it.'

Miller walked away, and Floyd turned tolook around the lounge. There were very fewpeople there, but one of them was walkingstraight towards him.

'Hello, Dimitri,' he said, because therewas no escape.

Dr Dimitri Moisewitch shook hands en-ergetically. He was a scientist from theUSSR. He was also one of Floyd's bestfriends, and for that reason he was the lastperson Floyd wished to talk to here and now.

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CHAPTER NINE

Moon Ship

'Hello, Heywood,' the Russian said,shaking hands. 'Nice to see you again. Howare you - and the children?'

'We're fine,' Floyd said. 'We often talkabout the wonderful time you gave us lastsummer.' He was sorry he could not soundmore sincere; they really had enjoyed theholiday at Dimitri's house in Odessa.

'And you - I suppose you're on your wayup?' Dimitri asked.

'Er, yes - my flight leaves in half anhour,' answered Floyd. 'Do you know MrMiller?'

The policeman had now approached, andwas standing at a respectful distance holdinga plastic cup of coffee.

'Of course. But please put that down, MrMiller. This is Dr Floyd's last chance to havea proper drink - let's not waste it. No - Imean it.'

They followed Dimitri out of the mainlounge into a smaller room with large win-dows. Soon they were sitting at a table,watching the stars move past. Space Station 1turned round once every minute, producingan artificial gravity equal to the Moon's. Thisgave passengers on their way to the Moon achance to get used to what they would exper-ience there.

'Now,' said the Russian, putting downhis drink, 'what's all this about illness at theUS Base? I wanted to go there on this trip,but they wouldn't let me. What's happening?

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Do you want any help from our medicalservices?'

'I'm sorry, Dimitri - we've been asked notto say anything at the moment. Thanks forthe offer, though.'

'Hmmm,' said Dimitri. 'Seems odd to methat you, a scientist, should be sent up to theMoon to look at an illness. Do you havemuch medical experience?'

Floyd smiled. 'I suppose I'm the sort ofscientist that knows about lots of differentsubjects. Maybe that's why they chose me.'

'Then do you know what TMA-1 means?'Miller's head came up in surprise, but Floydstayed calm, 'TMA-1? What an odd expres-sion. Where did you hear it?' he asked.

'Never mind,' answered the Russian.'You can't fool me. But if you've found

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something you can't handle, don't leave ituntil too late before you shout for help.'

Miller looked at his watch. 'We're due toboard in five minutes, Dr Floyd,' he said.' Ithink we'd better move.'

Though he knew that they still hadtwenty minutes, Floyd got up quickly. Tooquickly, because he had forgotten the one-sixth of gravity. He had to reach for the tableto keep himself down.

'Goodbye, Dimitri,' he said. 'It was niceseeing you.' It was not true, this time, but hefelt he had to say it.

As they left the room, Floyd said, 'Phew,that was difficult. Thanks for rescuing me.'

'You know, Doctor,' said Miller, 'I hopehe isn't right about us running intosomething we can't handle.'

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'That' Floyd answered,' is what I intendto find out.'

Forty-five minutes later, the Aries-IBmoonship pulled away from the station.There was none of the power and noise of atake-off from Earth, just a quiet whistling asthe three engines started up. The gentle pushlasted no more than fifteen minutes, andduring that time it was quite possible to getup and walk around.

Floyd had the whole ship to himselfagain, though it had been designed for thirtypassengers. It was strange and rather lonely,but he had the undivided attention of a stew-ard and stewardess, as well as two pilots andtwo engineers. He doubted that any man inhistory had ever received such service, and itwas unlikely that anyone would do so in thefuture. He should try to enjoy this trip, andthe pleasure of weightlessness. With the lossof gravity he had - at least for a while - lost

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most of his worries. Someone had once saidthat you could be frightened in space, butyou could not be worried there. It was per-fectly true.

The steward and stewardess, it seemed,were keen to make him eat for the wholetwenty-five hours of the trip, and he had towave away many unwanted meals. It was notdifficult to eat in zero gravity, despite thefears of early astronauts. The plates werefixed to the table, and all the food was madesticky. Hot soup was not possible, but apartfrom this the menus were fairly normal.

Drinks, of course, were a different mat-ter; all liquids had to be kept in plasticsqueeze-tubes.

When he was not eating, Floyd gavesome attention to the official reports he hadbrought with him. When he got tired ofthese, he connected his page-sized news

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screen to the ship's information system andread the latest reports from Earth. One byone he could look at the world's electronicnewspapers. Each of the stories on the frontpage had a number. When one was chosen,the little square grew until it filled thescreen.

There was just one sleep-period, whenthe main lights were switched off. Floyd laydown on the sofa and got his arms and legsinside the fixed sheet that would prevent himmoving away into space. When he woke up,the Moon was filling half the sky. He movedthrough to the Control Room to watch the fi-nal stages of the approach.

The ship was just above the line dividingnight and day. It moved towards the darkside, and he could see the sharp tops of themountains lit by the reflected light fromEarth. He felt some weight return as the shipslowed down. Now they were above an

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enormous crater with a flashing light in itscenter. A voice was calling above the whistleof the jets.

'Clavius Control to Special 14, you arecoming in nicely. Please make all controlchecks now'

The pilot pressed some switches, greenlights flashed, and he called back,' Controlchecks completed. All OK.'

Now the mountain tops were high abovethe ship, and then Floyd lost sight of them asthe engines blew up clouds of dust. He feltthe plane touch the ground, and the pilotshut down the engines. It took Floyd someminutes to accept that they had arrived, andsome time longer to believe that after a com-pletely normal flight he had landed on theMoon.

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CHAPTER TEN

Clavius Base

Clavius, two hundred and forty kilomet-ers across, is the second largest crater thatcan be seen from Earth. Here, Man wasbuilding his first permanent base on theMoon. In an emergency, it could produceeverything it needed to support life. Solidchemicals and gases could be produced byprocessing local rocks. In a great hothouse,under lamps at night and sunlight by day,thousands of small plants grew to provideoxygen and food. The scientists could turnthese, and other material grown in water, in-to very good copies of bread and meat andvegetables.

The hundreds of men and women whoworked on the Base were all highly-trained

scientists and technicians, carefully chosenbefore they had left Earth. Though living onthe Moon was physically easier than in theearly days, it was still psychologically diffi-cult. It did have its attractions, though. Oneof them was the low gravity, which produceda general feeling of happiness. However, thishad its dangers. It was simple enough totravel in a straight line. The problem camewhen you tried to turn a corner, becauseyour body continued in the same direction. Ittook time, and a few small accidents, fornewcomers to get used to this, and more ex-perienced Base workers tried to stay awayfrom them until they had.

***

The mountains that had seemed so largejust before landing had mysteriously disap-peared, hidden below the Moon's steeplycurving horizon. Around the ship was a flatgrey area, brightly lit by earthlight.

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A number of service vehicles were nowrolling up to the Aries-IB, moving on enorm-ous tyres. But Floyd was watching a smallbus that was bringing the people who wantedto meet him.

There were a number of bangs as it con-nected to the ship, then the sound of airmoving as pressure was equalized. The in-side door of the airlock opened, and the wel-coming party arrived.

It was led by Ralph Halvorsen, the BaseCommander. With him was his Chief Scient-ist, Dr Roy Michaels, and a group of scient-ists and managers. They seemed happy tosee him, ready to unload some of theirworries.

'Very pleased to have you with us, DrFloyd,' said Halvorsen. 'Did you have a goodtrip?'

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'Excellent,' Floyd answered. 'No prob-lems, and the crew looked after me verywell.'

The conversation continued as the busmoved away from the ship and into an en-trance passage. A large door opened, thenclosed behind them. This happened again,and a third time. When the last door hadclosed, they were back in atmosphere again.The people Floyd saw were wearing normalclothes.

After a short walk they arrived in an of-fice area. Floyd was happy to be surroundedby computers and telephones again after histime in space.

Halvorsen led Floyd towards a doorlabeled BASE COMMANDER, but before hecould show him inside his office, there wasan interruption. The door opened, and asmall figure ran out.

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'Daddy! You've been outside! And youpromised to take me!'

'Well, Diana,' said Halvorsen, 'I only saidI'd take you if I could. But I've been verybusy meeting Dr Floyd. Shake hands withhim - he's just come from Earth.'

The little girl - Floyd decided that shewas about eight - held out a hand. Her facewas slightly familiar. Then, with a shock, heunderstood why.

'I don't believe it!' he said. 'When I washere last, she was just a baby!'

'She had her fourth birthday last week,'Halvorsen answered proudly.' Children growfast in low gravity. But they don't age soquickly - they'll live longer than we do.'

Floyd stared at the confident little lady,noting that she was thinner as well as taller

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than an Earth child. 'It's nice to meet youagain, Diana,' he said. Then sudden curiositymade him ask, 'Would you like to go toEarth?'

Her eyes widened in surprise, then sheshook her head,

'It's a nasty place - you hurt yourselfwhen you fall down. And there are too manypeople.'

So here, Floyd told himself, is one of thefirst of the Space born. There would be moreof them in the future. The time was fast ap-proaching when Earth, like all mothers,would say goodbye to her children.

Halvorsen managed to persuade hisdaughter to leave him in peace, and the twomen went into the office. It was only fivemeters square, but it had the same furnitureas a Base Commander's office on Earth.

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There were signed photographs of importantpoliticians - including one of the President ofthe United States - on one wall, and picturesof famous astronauts on another.

Floyd sat back in a comfortable leatherchair and accepted a glass of wine, made inthe Base laboratory.

'How's it going, Ralph?' he said. Thewine was quite good.

'Not too bad,' Halvorsen said. 'However,there is one thing you should know beforeyou meet the others. My people are angry be-cause they can't communicate with Earth.They think their families will be worried thatthey've died of "illness".'

'I'm sorry about that,' said Floyd, 'but noone could think of a better story, and it'sworked. I met Moisewitch at the Space Sta-tion, and even he believed it.'

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'Well, that should make the policehappy.'

'Not too happy - he'd heard of TMA-1.He didn't know what it was, but the namehas got out. We need to find out what thething is, and quickly.'

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

Anomaly

Halvorsen led Floyd into a room thatcould hold a hundred people easily. With awhite screen on the end wall, and its rows ofseats, it looked like a conference center.However, the notices and pictures on thewalls showed that it was also the center oflocal cultural life.

About forty or fifty people were waitingfor Floyd, and everyone stood up politely ashe entered. Floyd sat down in the front row,while the Commander stood up on the plat-form and looked around his audience.

'Ladies and gentlemen,' Halvorsenbegan, 'I needn't tell you that this is a veryimportant occasion. We are delighted to have

Dr Heywood Floyd with us. He has just com-pleted a special flight from Earth to be here.'

Some of the audience clapped. Floydstood up for a moment, said a word of thanksand sat down again.

'Dr Michaels,' said Halvorsen, andwalked back to his seat.

The Chief Scientist stood up and movedto the platform. As he did so, the lights wereturned off and a photograph of the Moon ap-peared on the screen. At its center was thewhite ring of a large crater.

'Tycho,' said Michaels, although every-body there knew its name. 'During the lastyear we have been checking the magnetismof the whole region. This was completed lastmonth, and this is the result that started allthe trouble.'

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Another picture flashed on the screen. Itwas a map with many lines going across it.Generally, these were spaced quite far apart,but in one corner they came close togetherand formed a series of smaller and smallercircles. It was quite obvious that there wassomething strange here. In large lettersacross the bottom of the map were thewords: TYCHO MAGNETIC ANOMALY -ONE (TMA-1). Stamped on the top right ofthe map was another word: SECRET.

'At first we thought it was just a largemagnetic rock, but this would be very unusu-al for the area. So we decided to have a look.

'There was nothing on the surface, justthe usual flat ground under a thin layer ofmoon-dust. So we started to dig, and we dugfor two weeks - with the result you know.'

The darkened room became suddenlyquiet as the picture on the screen changed.

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Though everyone had seen it many times,they all leaned forwards, hoping to find newdetails. On Earth and Moon, less than a hun-dred people had been allowed to see thisphotograph.

It showed a man in a bright yellowspacesuit, standing at the bottom of a largehole, and holding a stick marked off in tenthsof a meter. Next to him was a piece of blackmaterial, standing about three meters highand a meter and a half wide.

'TMA-1,' Dr Michaels said, quietly. 'Itlooks new, doesn't it? However, we've nowbeen able to date it positively, from what weknow of the local rocks.

'In fact it's about three million years old.You are looking at the first proof of intelli-gent life beyond the Earth.'

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CHAPTER TWELVE

Journey by Earthlight

The travelling laboratory was now mov-ing across a flat area at 80 kilometers anhour. It was a large vehicle, carried on eightwheels. But it was much more than this; itwas also a base in which twenty men couldlive and work for several weeks.

As he looked ahead out of the window,Floyd could see a marked way stretchingahead of them, where dozens of vehicles hadflattened down the soft surface of the Moon.At regular distances apart there were tallthin poles, each carrying a flashing light. Noone could possibly get lost on the three-hun-dred kilometer journey from Clavius Base toTMA-1, although it was still night and theSun would not rise for several hours.

The stars overhead were only a littlebrighter than on a clear night on Earth, butthere was one thing that destroyed the ideaof being there. This was Earth itself, brightand round, hanging above the northern hori-zon. It shone down with a light muchstronger than the light of the full Moon,making this a land of blue and green.

As he sat with Halvorsen and Michaelsin the front observation lounge, immediatelybeneath the driver's position, Floyd'sthoughts turned again and again to the blackobject and its age of three million years. As ascientist, he was used to thinking aboutmuch longer periods of time, but these hadbeen in connection with the movements ofstars and the slow changes of the universe.Mind, or intelligence, had not been involved.

Three million years! All of written his-tory, with its countries and its kings, its suc-cesses and disasters, covered only about a

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thousandth of this great period of time. Manhimself, and most of the animals now aliveon Earth, did not even exist when the blackpuzzle was so carefully buried there.

Dr Michaels was sure it had been buried,and not by accident. When they dug down,they found that it was sitting on a wide plat-form of the same black material. Whoeverput it there wanted it to stay in the sameplace for a long time.

And so the old question had beenanswered. Here was proof, beyond all doubt,that there was other intelligent life in theuniverse. But with that knowledge came sad-ness. The unknown visitors had missed hu-mans by a long period of time.

And where did they come from, thesecreatures who could cross space while Manwas still living in trees? The Moon itself? No,that was completely impossible. If there had

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ever been life here, it had been destroyedduring the last period when the craters wereformed, when the surface was white-hot.

Earth? Very unlikely, though perhapsnot quite impossible. If intelligent non-hu-man creatures had lived on Earth, theywould have left many other signs of their ex-istence. But nothing else had been found be-fore TMA-1 was discovered on the Moon.

That left two possibilities - the planets,and the stars. But all scientific opinion wasagainst intelligent life anywhere else in theSolar System - or life of any kind except onEarth and Mars.

So perhaps these visitors had come fromthe stars - but that was even more difficult tobelieve. The journey from Earth to the Moonseemed quite long, but the nearest star was ahundred million times more distant...

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Floyd shook his head because he knewhe was wasting his time. He must wait untilthere was more knowledge.

'Please check your safety belts,' said theloudspeaker suddenly.' Forty degree slopeapproaching.'

Floyd had just put his belt on again whenthe vehicle slowly moved over the edge of aslope as steep as the roof of a house. Theearthlight, coming from behind them, wasnow very faint, and the vehicle's own frontlights had been switched on. They were goingdown the side of Tycho, and three hundredmeters below the slope leveled out into agreat flat area.

'There they are,' Michaels said, but Floydhad already noticed the group of red andgreen lights several kilometers ahead. Soonhe could see, shining in the earthlight, agroup of temporary buildings for the workers

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living there. Near these were a radio tower, agroup of parked vehicles and a large pile ofbroken rock.

'You can just see the crater,’ said Mi-chaels.' Over there on the right - about ahundred meters from the tower.'

So this is it, thought Floyd, as the busrolled past the buildings and came to theedge of the crater. He leaned forwards for abetter view as the vehicle moved slowly downthe slope. And there, exactly as he had seen itin the photographs, was TMA-1.

Floyd stared, shook his head and staredagain. Even in the bright earthlight, it washard to see the thing clearly. His first im-pression was a flat object that seemed tohave no thickness at all. This was because,although he was looking at a solid body, it re-flected so little light that he could only see itsshape.

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The bus stopped about six meters fromit. Then the lights were switched on allaround the crater. Where light touched theobject, it seemed to be swallowed up by theblack surface.

A box of tricks, thought Floyd, with asudden feeling of fear - waiting to be openedby curious Man. And what will he findinside?

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The Slow Dawn

The main building was only six meterssquare, and it was now very overcrowded. Inthis double-walled space, six scientists andtechnicians lived, worked and slept.

Floyd and Dr Michaels each put on aspacesuit and walked into the airlock. As thenoise of the pumps died away, Floyd felthimself move into silence. The sound of hissuit radio was a welcome interruption.

'Pressure OK, Dr Floyd?' said Michaels.'Are you breathing normally?'

'Yes, I'm fine.'

The outside door opened and, walkingslowly, Floyd followed Michaels through thelock. He looked around and, without warn-ing, the tip of the radio tower above his headseemed to catch fire as the rising Suntouched it.

They waited while the Base Commanderand two of his assistants came through theairlock, then walked slowly towards thecrater. It was still in shadow, but the lightsall around lit it up brightly. As Floyd walkeddown the slope, he felt a sense of helpless-ness. Here, at the gate of the Earth, was amystery that might never be solved.

His thoughts were interrupted by his suitradio.

'Base Commander speaking. Could youall form a line? We'd like to take a few pho-tos. Dr Floyd, will you stand in the middle -Dr Michaels - thank you...'

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Though it seemed funny at first, Floydhad to admit that he was glad somebody hadbrought a camera. It would be a historicphoto, and he hoped his face could be seenthrough the helmet of his suit.

'Thanks, gentlemen,' said the photo-grapher. 'We'll ask the technical staff at theBase to send you copies.'

Then Floyd turned his full attention tothe black object - walking slowly round it, ex-amining it from every side. He did not expectto find anything, because he knew that everysquare centimeter had already been lookedat very closely.

Suddenly the Sun lifted itself over theedge of the crater and shone on the flat sideof the object. But the object seemed to takein all of the light and reflect nothing. Floyddecided to try a simple experiment. He stoodbetween the object and the Sun, and looked

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for his own shadow on the smooth blacksheet. There was nothing to be seen. Hethought of the amount of heat that was fall-ing on that surface; if there was anything in-side, it would be rapidly cooking.

For a moment he wondered about en-ergy from the Sun. But who would be crazyenough to bury a sun-powered object sixmeters underground?

Floyd looked up at the Earth. Only a fewof the six billion people there knew of thisdiscovery. How would the world react to thenews when it was finally broadcast?

In fact every person of real intelligencewould find his life, his values, his ideas,changed a little. Even if nothing was ever dis-covered about TMA-1, Man would know thathe was not alone in the Universe.

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Floyd was still thinking about this whenhis helmet speaker suddenly gave out a highelectronic scream. While he was trying tofind the sound control, four more of thescreams struck his ears. Then there wassilence.

All around the crater, figures were stand-ing in shocked surprise. So there is nothingwrong with my equipment, Floyd told him-self; everyone heard those sounds.

After three million years of darkness,TMA-1 had greeted dawn on the Moon.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Listeners

A hundred million kilometers beyondMars. Deep Space Recorder 79 continuedwith its observations of radio noise and dis-tant stars. Anything that it saw or heard wasrecorded in its memory and sent back toEarth every twenty-four hours. There, ma-chines waited to examine the information,and then add it to the thousands of kilomet-ers of tape stored in the World Space Centersin Washington, Moscow and Canberra.

And now Deep Space Recorder 79 hadnoted something strange - a faint but unmis-takable movement across the Solar System,quite unlike anything it had noticed in thepast. Automatically, it recorded the direc-tion, the time and the strength.

Orbiter Ml5, circling Mars twice a day,and even Explorer 5, heading out into thecold emptiness beyond Pluto, also noted apeculiar burst of energy. They reported itautomatically to the memory stores onEarth.

The computers were not programmed tonotice the connection between the three setsof signals from machines millions of kilomet-ers apart. But as soon as he looked at hismorning report, the Chief Controller at God-dard knew that something strange hadpassed through the Solar System during thelast twenty-four hours.

He had only part of its path, but whenthe computers had done their work, it was asclear as a line of footprints across snow. Apattern of energy had jumped from the faceof the Moon and was heading out towardsthe stars.

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PART THREE

Between Planets

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Discovery

The ship was still only thirty days fromEarth, but sometimes David Bowman couldhardly believe that he had ever really livedthere. His life now was in the closed littleworld of Discovery. When he spoke to FrankPoole about this, he found that Frank hadthe same feelings. But this sense of separa-tion was easy enough to understand. In thefifty years since men had first gone intospace, there had never been a mission quitelike this. Discovery was going past Mars andJupiter, all the way to Saturn. And she wouldnever return.

For Discovery it would be a one-way trip- but her crew had no intention of dying. Ifall went well, they would be back on Earth

within seven years. For five of these yearsthey would be in hibernation, while theywaited for rescue by Discovery II - whichhad not yet been built.

It was a calculated risk, like all voyagesinto the unknown. But experiments hadproved that human hibernation was perfectlysafe, and it had opened up new possibilitiesin space travel.

The three other members of the crew, allscientists who would not be needed until theship reached Saturn, would sleep throughthe whole flight there. In this way, a lot offood and other materials would be saved.Also, they would be fresh and rested after theten-month voyage.

Then the ship would orbit Saturn, givingthem a hundred days to map and study aworld eighty times the area of Earth, andsurrounded by fifteen known moons - one of

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them as large as the planet Mercury. Theywould radio their discoveries back to Earth,so even if the explorers never returned, thesewould not be lost.

Sometimes Bowman envied Whitehead.Kaminski and Hunter, his three unconsciouscolleagues. They were free from all problemsand all responsibility. Until they reachedSaturn, the outside world did not exist.

But that world was watching them whilethey slept. In the Control Room there werefive small screens. The last two, markedPOOLE and BOWMAN, were plain and life-less. Their time would not come until a yearfrom now. The others were covered withsmall green lights which showed thateverything was well with the three sleepers.They also had a set of moving lines showingheartbeat, breathing and brain activity. Thislast line hardly moved at all. If any

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consciousness remained, it was beyond thereach of instruments.

Bowman knew this from personal exper-ience. Before he was chosen for this mission,his reactions to hibernation had been tested.When all the instruments were in place onhis body, he had seen a pattern of movinglights for a few seconds.

Then they had disappeared, and dark-ness had come. He never felt the drugs takeeffect, or the first touch of cold as his bodytemperature was reduced to a few degreesabove freezing...

When he woke up, it seemed that he hadhardly closed his eyes. But he knew that waswrong. Somehow he was sure that years hadpassed.

Had the mission been completed? Hadthey already reached Saturn, finished their

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work and gone into hibernation? Was Dis-covery II here to take them home?

He opened his eyes, but there was littleto see. Warm air was blowing across him,and quiet music came from a speaker behindhis head. It was slowly growing louder andlouder...

Then a relaxed, friendly voice - he knewit came from a computer - spoke to him.

'Hello, Dave. Do not get up or attemptany violent movements. Do not try to speak.'

He did not want to get up. He was happyknowing that the rescue ship had come andthat soon he would be seeing other humanbeings.

Some time later, another voice spoke tohim. This time it was human. It was alsofamiliar.

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'Hello, Dave. You're fine. You can talknow. Do you know where you are?'

He thought about this, and had to admitto himself that he was not really sure. Heshook his head.

'Don't worry, Dave. This is Frank Poole.Everything's fine. We're going to open thedoor now and pull you out.'

Soft lights came on, and then all hismemories returned to him, and he knew ex-actly where he was.

Though he had come back from the fur-thest borders оf sleep, and the nearest bor-ders of death, he had been gone only week.The mission was still more than a year in thefuture. He was still in the crew trainer at theHouston Space Flight Center.

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Hal

But now Texas was a tiny spot, and eventhe United States was hard to see. Most ofDiscovery's many telescopes were pointed atother planets, in the direction she was travel-ling. There was one, however, that lookedback at Earth. It was fixed to the edge of thegreat dish that sent the ship's radio mes-sages. It made sure that the dish pointed inthe right direction. Messages could thencome and go along a path that became morethan three million kilometers longer everyday.

At least once every watch period, Bow-man went to the screen that showed theview from that telescope and looked back

towards his home. Sometimes he saw a fa-miliar shape, like the Pacific. And he re-membered days and nights spent on itsislands.

The sixth member of the crew cared fornone of these things, as it was not human. Itwas the HAL 9000 computer, the brain andnervous system of the ship. In the 1980s,Minsky and Good had shown how it was pos-sible to build a computer simply by design-ing a learning programme. In this way, anartificial brain could be grown in a very sim-ilar way to the growth of a human brain. Theresult was a machine that could do mostthings that a human brain could do, but withmuch greater speed and certainty.

Hal had been trained for this mission asthoroughly as his human colleagues, but in amuch shorter time. His main job was tocheck, repeatedly, all the systems on the ship- oxygen pressure, temperature, conditions

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in the hibernators, and everything else thatthe crew depended on to stay alive.

The first computers had received com-mands through keyboards, and had repliedthrough printers and screens. Hal could dothis if necessary, but most of his communica-tion was through the spoken word. Poole andBowman could talk to Hal as they would to ahuman being; he replied in the perfect Eng-lish learned during the short weeks of hiselectronic childhood.

The question of whether Hal could actu-ally think had been answered by the Britishmathematician Alan Turing back in the1940s. Turing had explained that if you had along conversation with a machine, and youcould not tell if it was a machine or a man,then the machine was thinking. Hal couldeasily pass the Turing test.

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Daily Life

Bowman and Poole each worked fortwelve hours out of twenty-four, and theywere never both asleep at the same time,officer-on-duty normally remained in theControl Room, while his assistant did thegeneral housekeeping, checked the ship orrelaxed in his room.

Bowman's day began at 06.00 hours,when Hal woke him up. He did his exercises,then washed and shaved before eating hisbreakfast and reading that morning's WorldTimes. On Earth, he never read the paper ascarefully as he did now. Even the smaller

pieces of news interested him as they flashedacross the screen.

At 07.00 he took over from Poole in theControl Room bringing him a plastic tube ofcoffee from the kitchen. If then was nothingto report and no action to be taken, hechecked all the instrument readings, and dida series of tests designed to recognize pos-sible problems. By 10.00 this was finished,and he started on a Study period.

Bowman had been a student for morethan half his life, and would continue to beone till he retired. At thirty-five, he hadalready taken in as much knowledge as twoor three university educations wouldprovide. He had never been able to stay in-terested in only one subject, and this madehim very suitable for 'his' present job. Poolewas the same, and the two of them, withsome help from Hal's enormous stores of in-formation, could handle any problems that

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were likely to appear during the voyage. Atmidday Bowman went to the kitchen and leftthe ship to Hal while he prepared his lunch.Poole joined him for this meal before leavingfor his six-hour sleep period. Their menushad been planned with as much care as therest of the mission. The food, most of itfreeze-dried, was excellent and only neededto be put into the tiny automatic oven. Theycould enjoy what tasted like - and, equallyimportant, looked like - orange juice, eggs(any Style), steak, roast meats, fresh veget-ables, various fruits, ice-cream, and evenfreshly-baked bread.

After lunch, from 13.00 to 16.00, Bow-man made a slow and careful tour of theship, or as much of it as could be visited. Dis-covery measured almost a hundred andtwenty-five meters from end to end, but thecrew spent most of their time inside atwelve-meter pressurized ball in the center.

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The central slice of this ball turned con-tinuously, producing an artificial gravityequal to the gravity of the Moon. That wasenough to allow for something like normalliving.

Like all vehicles designed for deep spacetravel, Discovery had been put together inorbit above the Earth. The large numbers ofinstruments on the outside of her bodywould be destroyed by entry into an atmo-sphere, or even the pull of a planet's gravity.She was a creature of pure space - and shelooked it.

At around 16.00, Bowman finished hisinspection and made a detailed report toMission Control. Then he listened to Earthand sent back his reply to any questions. At18.00 hours, Poole woke up and tookcommand.

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Bowman then had six off-duty hours, touse as he liked. Sometimes he continued hisstudies, or listened to music or watchedfilms. Much of the time he wanderedthrough the ship's enormous electronic lib-rary, following the voyages of earlier ex-plorers. He travelled with Pytheas out of theMediterranean along the coast of a Europethat was just leaving the Stone Age with Ma-gellan round the world for the first time, orwith Cool to the great unknown continent ofAustralia. And he began to read the Odysseywhich spoke to him more than any otherbook across the great distance of time.

For relaxation he could always play vari-ous board games with Hal. If Hal really tried,he could win every time, but the crew wouldget too depressed. So he had been pro-grammed to win only 50 per cent of thegames, and his human partners pretendednot to know this.

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At 20.00 Bowman had dinner, againwith Poole, and after this there was an hourduring which he could make and receive per-sonal calls from Earth.

Like all his colleagues, Bowman was un-married; it was not fair to send family menon a mission of such length. Though manywomen had promised to wait until the crew'sreturn, no one really believed this. At first,Bowman and Poole had been making per-sonal calls to girls on Earth quite regularly,though they knew that many other ears mustbe listening. But in time, the warmth and thefrequency of these conversations grew less.They had expected this. It was one of theproblems of an astronaut's life.

However, in general the two men werefairly content with their routine lives. Theirgreatest hope was that nothing would spoilits peace and quiet in the weeks and monthsahead.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Through the Asteroids

Week after week passed, and Discoverymoved beyond the orbit of Mars towardsJupiter. Ahead lay the most dangerous partof the journey, an area of space crossed bythe orbit of more than a million knownasteroids.

Only four of these were over a hundredkilometers across, but even the smallestcould completely destroy the ship. However,the chances of this were very low. The aver-age distance between asteroids was at least amillion and a half kilometers.

'On Day 86 they were due to make theirclosest approach to a known asteroid. It hadno name - just the number 7794 - and it was

fifty-meter rock that had been discovered in1997.

Bowman came on duty, Hal remindedhim of the meeting. The path of the asteroidagainst the stars was already on the screens.There was also the information that 7794would miss them by only fifteen hundredkilometers, at a relative speed of a hundredand thirty thousand kilometers an hour.

When Bowman asked Hal for the tele-scopic view, a small number of stars flashedonto the screen. There were a number ofpoints of light, but nothing that looked likean asteroid.

'Show me which one it is,' Bowman said,and immediately four lines appeared on thescreen, surrounding a tiny spot of light. Hestared at it for many minutes, wondering ifHal could be mistaken, then he saw that thespot was moving. It might still be half a

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million kilometers away, but its movementshowed that it was much closer than any-thing else they could see.

When Poole joined him in the ControlRoom, six hours later, 7794 was much biggerand moving faster against its background.They both stared at it. Though they knewthat 7794 was only a lifeless piece of rock, itwas also the only solid thing they would seethis side of Jupiter.

As it raced past them at over thirty-sixkilometers a second, the automatic camerastook dozens of photographs, which wouldlater be sent back to Earth.

Within an hour, 7794 was just a spot oflight again. The next time Bowman came onwatch, it had gone completely. They werealone again, and would remain alone untilthe first of Jupiter's moons came towardsthem, three months from now.

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CHAPTER NINETEEN

Passing Jupiter

Even from thirty million kilometersaway, Jupiter was already the biggest objectin the sky ahead. The planet was now a palepink circle, about half the size of the Moonwhen seen from the Earth. Moving aroundits middle were the bright stars of Io,Europa, Ganymede and Callista. Each one ofthem was as big as a planet, but here theywere just satellites of an enormous master.

In fact, Bowman had not really under-stood how big Jupiter was until one day inthe electronic library, he saw a picture. Itshowed the surface of Earth taken off, thenfixed like the skin of an animal on the shapeof Jupiter. Against this background, all the

continents and oceans of Earth appearedsmaller than India on a map of the world.

When Bowman used the ship's telescope,he saw only racing clouds that had beenpulled out into long bands by the planet'sfast turning speed. Hidden beneath thoseclouds was more material than in all of theother planets of the Solar System. And whatelse, Bowman wondered, was also hiddenthere?

Over the radio connection with Earth,the information was going back in a constantstream. They were now so far from homethat, even travelling at the speed of light,their signals were taking fifty minutes fortheir journey. Though the whole world waslooking over their shoulders, watchingthrough their eyes and their instruments asJupiter approached, it would be almost anhour before the news of their discoveriesreached home. Discovery passed within

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thirty thousand kilometers of Europa, and allinstruments were aimed at the approachingworld. Here were twenty-two million squarekilometers of land which, until this moment,had never been more than a tiny spot in thebest telescope. From a distance it hadseemed like an enormous snowball, andcloser observation showed that it really was abrilliant white. Unlike the dusty Moon, itssurface was covered with shining objects thatlooked like large pieces of ice. Almost cer-tainly these were formed mainly from waterthat Jupiter's gravity had somehow failed tocapture.

As quickly as it had rushed out of the skyahead, Europa dropped behind the ship, andnow Jupiter itself was only two hours away.Even though Hal constantly checked andrechecked the ship's orbit, it was difficult tobelieve they were not flying straight into theenormous planet.

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Now was the time to drop the atmo-spheric probes which, it was hoped, wouldcontinue to operate long enough to sendback some information from below theclouds. As they slowly fell away, it was pos-sible to see that the ship was in a steady orbitand would circle the planet safely.

And now, for the first time, they were go-ing to lose the Sun. Though it was muchsmaller now, it had been with them for thewhole of their five-month journey. As theirorbit dived into the shadow of Jupiter, theywatched it sink into the great clouds. Therewas a moment of flashing fire all along thehorizon, then night came.

But the great world below was not whollydark. Faint rivers of light moved from hori-zon to horizon. Here and there they gatheredinto pools of liquid fire, always moving, con-stantly changed by what was happening

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below. It was a wonderful sight, and it heldPoole and Bowman's attention.

'Earth signal is dying rapidly,' an-nounced Hal. 'We are entering the first silentarea.'

They had been expecting this, but theyfelt a great loneliness. The radio silencewould only last for an hour, but that hourwould be the longest of their lives.

Jupiter was now an enormous wall offire, stretching out of sight above them - andthe ship was climbing straight up the side ofit. Though they knew they were moving fartoo quickly for even Jupiter's gravity to cap-ture them, it was hard to believe that Discov-ery had not become a satellite of this enorm-ous world.

At last, far ahead, there was light alongthe horizon. They were leaving the shadow,

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heading out towards the Sun. And then Halannounced, 'I am in radio contact withEarth. I am also happy to say that the orbithas been successful. Our time to Saturn isone hundred and sixty-seven days, fivehours, eleven minutes.'

That was within a minute of the originalcalculation. Discovery had successfully usedthe enormous gravity of Jupiter to increaseher own speed by several thousand kilomet-ers an hour. She had drawn energy from thegreat planet itself, which was now carrying itdeeper into space.

But the laws of nature remained un-broken. As the speed of the ship had in-creased, Jupiter had slowed down, but bysuch a small amount that it could never bemeasured. The time had not yet come whenMan could leave his mark on the SolarSystem.

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As the light grew quickly around them,and the small Sun lifted again into Jupiter'ssky, Poole and Bowman reached out silentlyand shook each other's hands.

Though they could hardly believe it, thefirst part of the mission was safely over.

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CHAPTER TWENTY

The World of the Gods

But they had not yet finished withJupiter. Far behind, the two probes that Dis-covery had sent out were making their firstcontact with, the atmosphere.

One was never heard from again. It hadprobably entered too steeply and burned upbefore it could send any information. Thesecond was more successful. It slicedthrough the upper layers of Jupiter's atmo-sphere, then swung out into space again. Ithad then lost so much speed that, asplanned, it began to fall back again towardsthe planet. Two hours later, it re-entered theatmosphere on the daylight side - moving atover a hundred thousand kilometers anhour.

Immediately it was surrounded by acloud of gas, and radio contact was lost.There were anxious moments of waitingthen, for the two watchers in the ControlRoom. They could not be certain that theprobe would not burn up completely.

But the protective cover did its job, longenough for the probe to slow down. It thenpushed out its scientific instruments andbegan to look around. On Discovery, now al-most half a million kilometers away, the ra-dio started to bring the first news fromJupiter.

Most of it was details about pressure,temperature and a dozen other changing fea-tures which the scientists on Earth wouldStudy later. However, there was one messagethat could be understood; it was the TVpicture.

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At first they could only see yellow mist,mixed with red areas that moved past thecamera at high speed as the probe fell at sev-eral hundred kilometers an hour. The mistgrew thicker, and it was impossible to tell ifthe camera was seeing for ten centimeters orten kilometers. Then, suddenly, the mist dis-appeared as the probe fell out of this firstlayer of cloud.

The scene below was so strange that for amoment it was almost meaningless to an eyeaccustomed to the colors and shapes ofEarth. It looked like an endless sea of gold,with grey waves running across it. But therewas no movement, and it could not possiblybe an ocean because the probe was still highin the planet’s atmosphere. It had to be an-other layer of cloud.

Then the camera caught something.Many kilometers away coming up throughthe cloud, was a curiously regular mountain.

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Around the top of this were other smallwhite clouds, all about the same size, allquite separate.

Poole and Bowman stared at this, thefirst sight of something on Jupiter that mightbe solid. But they would learn nothing more,because now the probe was reaching the endof its life, it sank lower and lower, the pres-sure of the gas on it grew great. With onewarning flash, the picture disappeared.

Poole and Bowman had the samethought in their minds, there was life downthere, how long would it take to find it. Afterthat, how long before men could follow thisfirst probe and in what kind of ship?

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- PART FOUR -

Edge of Darkness

Chapter twenty one

Birthday Party

The familiar sound of 'Happy Birthday'died away among the screens of the ControlRoom. The Poole family, standing roundbirthday cake on Earth, went suddenly silent.

Then Frank's father said, 'Well, son -can't think of anything else to say at the mo-ment, except that our thoughts are with youand we're wishing you the happiest ofbirthdays.'

'Take care, darling,' Mrs Poole said, tear-fully. 'God be with you.'

Then they all said goodbye, and the filmended. Poole continues to stare at the screen,thinking that all this had happened than an

hour ago. By now, his family had gone theirseparate ways. It only made him feel furtheraway from home.

Sorry to interrupt the celebrations,' saidHal, 'but we have a problem.'

'What is it?' Bowman and Poole bothasked.

'I am having difficulty in staying in con-tact with Earth. The trouble is in the AE 35unit. I believe it may fail within seventy-twohours.'

'We'll take care of it,' Bowman replied.'Put Earth on the screen.'

They studied their home planet for sometime. The picture coming to them from theTV camera fixed to the edge of the big radiodish. Unless the narrow beam was pointingstraight at Earth, they could neither send nor

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receive messages. At the moment, it seemedto be working perfectly.

'Hal, do you know what the trouble is?'asked Bowman.

'It comes and goes, and I can't tell ex-actly. But it does seem to be in the AE 35unit.'

Bowman's first thought was to ask Halfor more details, but he decided to try him-self. He ran his mind over the thousands ofon the ship, and after a few moments the in-formation came to him. The antenna waskept pointing at Earth by motors controlledfrom the central computer. But the instruc-tions went to the AE 35 unit first, where theywere changed into something that the mo-tors could understand. It was like a nervecenter in the body, which translates thebrains signals into instructions for in

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Movement. Now Bowman had a question hecould ask Hal.

'What do you suggest?' he said.

'The best idea is to replace the unit witha spare, so we can check it over.'

'Put it up on the screen,' Bowman said.

Bowman studied the drawing, then said,'This means going on outside the ship.'

'I'm sorry,' Hal replied. 'I thought youknew.'

'I probably did a year ago,' Bowman said.'Anyway, it looks simple enough. We onlyhave to unlock a cover and put in a new unit.'

'That suits me fine,' said Poole, who wasresponsible for routine work outside.'

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'It'll be something different.'111/216

CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

Leaving the Ship

Poole put on his pressure suit andclimbed inside the small vehicle designed forwork outside Discovery. It was round inshape and had a large window in front whichgave the operator an excellent view. Discov-ery carried three of these vehicles, known asAnna, Betty and Clara.

Poole spent ten minutes carefully check-ing the controls. Then, when he was com-pletely satisfied, he spoke to Hal over the ra-dio. Though Bowman was watching in theControl Room, he would not get involved un-less something went obviously wrong.

'This is Betty. Start pumping operation.'

'Pumping operation started,' repeatedHal.

At once Poole could hear the noise of thepumps as air was taken out of the room.Then the thin metal of the vehicle's skinbegan to make small noises under the pres-sure. After five minutes, Hal reported:

'Pumping finished.'

Poole made a final check of the instru-ments. Everything was perfectly normal.

'Open outside door,' he ordered.

Hal repeated the instruction, and thewalls of the ship slid apart. Poole felt thevehicle shake slightly as the last of the airrushed out into space. Then he was lookingat the stars.

'Send vehicle out.'

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Very slowly, the metal bar from whichBetty was hanging pushed itself out throughthe open door, until the vehicle was just out-side the ship.

Poole pulled back slightly on the main jetcontrol, and Betty slid off the metal bar. Henow had no connection with Discovery - noteven a safety line.

He let the vehicle move out for thirtymeters, then slowed her down and turnedback towards the ship, approaching the an-tenna from behind in case he interrupted theradio signal and caused a short loss of con-tact with Earth.

He saw the small metal plate thatcovered the AE 35 unit. It was held in placeby four connectors, and should not be diffi-cult to remove. However, he could not do thejob from inside the vehicle. He spoke to Bow-man on the radio, and they discussed what

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needed to be done. Outside the ship therewere no small mistakes.

He parked Betty on top of the ship aboutsix meters away from the antenna. Then hechecked the systems of his pressure suit and,when he was quite satisfied, let the air out ofthe vehicle. There was one more thing to dobefore he got out. He pushed down a switchso that Betty was now controlled by Hal.Though he was still connected to the vehicleby a very strong safety line, even the bestlines could fail. He would look a fool if heneeded his vehicle and was unable to call itto his assistance by passing instructions toHal.

The door of the vehicle swung open, andhe moved slowly out into the silence ofspace. Never move quickly - stop and think -these were the rules for working outside theship.

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With a gentle push, he sent himself to-wards the big round dish. His double shad-ow, produced by Betty's two front lights,danced across the skin of the ship. Hestopped himself from banging into the an-tenna by pushing out an arm. Quickly hehooked his safety line on.

He studied the four Connectors for a mo-ment, then took a tool from the belt of hissuit and started to undo them. He had topush against his safety line to stay in place,but they came off without any trouble. Themetal cover was a little hard to move, butafter a few knocks it came loose. He fixed itto one of the antenna supports.

Now he could see the AE 35 unit. It wasabout the same size and shape as a postcard,and it had a small handle so it could easily beremoved. But it was still controlling the dir-ection of the antenna. If he removed it now,the dish would swing round to its central

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position, to point along the length of theship. It might even crash into him as itturned. Also, this would cut off contact withEarth.

'Hal,' Poole called out over the radio.' Iam going to remove the unit. Switch off allcontrol power to the antenna system.'

'Antenna control power off,' Hal said.

'Right. I'm pulling the unit out now.'

The card slipped but without any diffi-culty. Within a minute, its spare was inplace.

But Poole was taking no chances. Hepushed himself gently away from the an-tenna, just in case the big dish went wildwhen the power was switched back on. Thenhe called Hal again.

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'The new unit should be working. Switchcontrol power on.'

'Power on,' Hal said. The antenna didn'tmove.

'Unit is working,' Hal said, ten secondslater. In that time he had carried out as manytests as a small army of human inspectors.

'Fine,' said Poole. 'I'm now replacing thecover.'

This was often the most dangerous partof a job outside. Mistakes were often madewhen people had to tidy up before their re-turn to the ship. But Frank Poole was a care-ful man - that was one reason why he hadbeen chosen for the mission. He took histime, and though one of the connectors al-most got away from him, he caught it beforeit had travelled more than a couple ofmeters.

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Fifteen minutes later, he was moving thevehicle back through the open doors of theship, quietly confident that the job would notneed to be done again.

He was, however, sadly mistaken.

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CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Sickness

'Do you mean,' Frank Poole said, moresurprised than annoyed, 'that I did all thatwork for nothing?'

'It seems like it,' answered Bowman. 'Theunit's working perfectly. It passed every test.'

The two men were standing in the tinyworkshop-laboratory in the central livingarea. The thin, card-sized plate of the AE 35unit lay on the table, connected to a numberof wires which led to a small screen.

'Try it yourself,' said Bowman.

Poole pushed the TEST button. At once,the screen flashed the message, UNIT OK.

'What do you think?' Poole said.

'Maybe Hal's own testing system made amistake. It's possible.'

'It's more likely that there's a fault withthis thing,' Poole said, pointing to the screen.'Anyway, better safe than sorry. I'm glad wereplaced the unit.'

Bowman took out the AE 35 and held itup to the light. The thin material wascovered with wiring, so it looked like a pieceof modern art.

'We can't take any chances - this is ourconnection with Earth. I'll write a reportthen drop this in a box. Somebody else canworry about it when we get home.'

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But the worrying began a long time be-fore that, with the next message from Earth.

'This is Mission Control. We appear tohave a slight problem.

'Your report that there is nothing wrongwith the AE 35 unit agrees with our opinion.It seems more likely that your computermade a mistake. This is not a reason toworry, but we would like you to watch out forany other changes from normal perform-ance. We have suspected several other irreg-ularities in the past few days, but none haveseemed important enough to needcorrection.

'We are running more tests with bothour 9000s, and will report as soon as resultsare available. If necessary, we may discon-nect your 9000 temporarily for testing andpass over control to one of our computers.The time difference will introduce problems,

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but our studies show that Earth control isperfectly satisfactory at this stage of themission.

'This is Mission Control. Message ends.'

Frank Poole, who was in command whenthe message came in, thought about this insilence. Then he went to see Bowman, whowas pouring himself some coffee in the kit-chen. Poole said good morning - they bothstill used Earth time - and helped himself toa cup.

'What's the problem?' said Bowman. Anychange from the normal routine meant thatsomething was not quite right.

'Well...' Poole answered slowly. 'We'vejust had a message from Mission Control.'He lowered his voice. 'We may have a slightcase of space sickness on board.'

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Perhaps Bowman was not fully awakebecause it took him several seconds to un-derstand. Then he said, 'Oh, I see. What elsedid they tell you?'

'That there was no reason to worry. Andthat they were considering a temporaryswitch-over to Earth Control, while theychecked things out.'

They both knew, of course, that Hal washearing every word, but they could not helpspeaking indirectly. Hal was their colleague,and they did not want to embarrass him. Butit did not yet seem necessary to discuss thematter in private.

Bowman finished his breakfast in si-lence, while Poole played with the emptycoffee-container. They were both thinkinghard, but there was nothing more to say.

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Whatever happened, the atmosphere onthe ship had changed a little. There was ten-sion in the air and for the first time, a feelingthat something might be going wrong.

Discovery was no longer a happy ship.

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CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

Breakdown

Poole was asleep, and Bowman wasreading in the Control Room, when Hal an-nounced, 'Dave, I have a report for you.'

'What is it?'

'We have another bad AE 35 unit. Mytests suggest failure within twenty-fourhours.'

Bowman put down his book and staredat the computer screen. He knew, of course,that Hal was not really there, whatever thatmeant. But it seemed polite to look at thescreen when speaking to him.

'I can't understand it, Hal. Two unitscan't go wrong within a couple of days.'

'It does seem strange, Dave. But I amcertain that the unit will fail.'

'Let me see how things look now.'

He knew that this would prove nothing,but he wanted time to think. The familiarview of Earth appeared on the screen. It wasperfectly centered on the cross-wires, asBowman knew it must be. If there had beenany break in communication, the alarmwould already have sounded.

'Have you any idea,' he said, 'what'scausing the fault?'

It was unusual for Hal to pause so long.Then he answered: 'Not really, Dave. As I re-ported earlier, I can't say exactly where thetrouble is.'

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'You're quite certain,' said Bowman, cau-tiously, 'that you haven't made a mistake?You know we tested the other AE 35 unitthoroughly, and there was nothing wrongwith it.'

'Yes, I know that, but I'm sure there is afault. If it's not in the unit, it may be in oneof the other systems.'

That was possible, though it might bevery difficult to prove - until a breakdownhappened and showed them where thetrouble was.

'Well, I'll report it to Mission Controland we'll see what they advise.' He paused,but there was no reaction. 'Hal,' he contin-ued, 'is something worrying you - somethingthat possibly caused this problem?'

Again there was that unusual delay.Then Hal answered, 'I'm not sure how to say

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this nicely, Dave, but... I'm not a human be-ing; I'm a computer. I don't make mistakes.'

***

When the face of Dr Simonson, the ChiefProgrammer, appeared on the screen, Pooleand Bowman knew this could only meantrouble.

'This is Mission Control. We have lookedinto your AE 35 difficulty, and both of ourHal 9000s are in agreement. The report yougave of a second failure only makes us morecertain.

'The fault does not lie in the AE 35, andthere is no need to replace it again. The faultis in the connecting wires, and this suggestsa problem with programming. We can onlyrepair this if you disconnect your 9000 andswitch to Earth Control. You will therefore

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take the following steps, beginning at 22.00Ship Time...'

The voice died away. At the same time,the alarm system sounded, and then Hal'svoice said, 'Condition Yellow! ConditionYellow!'

'What's wrong?' Bowman said, though hehad already guessed the answer.

'The AE 35 unit has failed, as I said itwould.'

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CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

First Man to Saturn

As he had done on his previous trip out-side, Frank Poole parked Betty about sixmeters away from the antenna and switchedcontrol over to Hal before opening up.

'Going outside now,' he reported toBowman.

There was silence for some time, asPoole moved slowly towards the antenna.Then he called out, 'Hal, there's too muchshadow here - swing the vehicle lights twentydegrees to the left - thanks - that's OK.'

Somewhere in Bowman's mind, a warn-ing bell started to ring. There was something

strange, and it took him a few seconds torealize what it was.

Hal had obeyed the order, but had notsaid a word. That was unusual. When Poolehad finished, they should discuss this...

Outside, Poole removed the cover, thenpulled the little unit out of its place and heldit up to the sunlight.

'Here it is,' he said. 'It still looks perfectlyOK to me.'

Then he stopped. A sudden movementhad caught his eye - out here, where nomovement was possible.

He looked up in alarm. The pattern oflight from the vehicle's two main lights hadstarted to move around him. His firstthought was that Betty had moved away

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from the ship. But no - she was comingstraight towards him, under full power.

The sight was so unbelievable that hesaid nothing; he did not even try to moveaway. Then he recovered enough to shout,'Hall! Full braking...'

Inside Discovery, that shout over the ra-dio made Bowman jump violently.

'What's wrong, Frank?' he called.

Then, outside the wide observation win-dows, something moved. He saw Betty, trav-elling almost at full speed, heading out to-wards the stars.

'Hal!' he cried.' What's wrong? Full brak-ing power on Betty! Full braking power!'

Nothing happened, and then, pulled be-hind her on the end of the safety line,

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appeared a spacesuit. One look was enoughto tell Bowman the worst. It was the softshape of a suit that had lost its pressure andwas open to vacuum.

Within five minutes the vehicle and itssatellite had disappeared among the stars.For a long time, David Bowman stared afterit into the emptiness that stretched so manymillions of kilometers ahead. Only onethought kept hammering in his brain.

Frank Poole would be the first of all mento reach Saturn.

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CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

Conversation with Hal

Bowman was sitting in the little kitchen,a half-finished cup of coffee in his hand. Hedid not remember making his way therefrom the Control Room.

Directly opposite him was one of theglass fish-eyes that Hal used to see aroundthe ship. Bowman rose slowly to his feet andwalked towards it.

'It's a pity about Frank,' Hal said.

'Yes,' Bowman answered, after a longpause. 'It is.'

'He was an excellent crew member.'

Finding the coffee still in his hand, Bow-man took a slow mouthful. Had it been anaccident, caused by some failure of thevehicle controls? Or was it a mistake by Hal?

The only other possibility was that Halhad killed Frank. Bowman found the ideastrange, but he had to consider it. If it wastrue, he was in terrible danger.

His next act was written into the missionorders, but he was not sure how safe it was.If either crew member was killed, the otherman had to replace him at once from the hi-bernators. Whitehead was first on the list,then Kaminski, then Hunter. The waking upprocess was under Hal's control, so he couldact if both his human colleagues were dead.

But Bowman could also take control if hewanted to. He also felt that one human

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companion was not enough. He decided towake up all three of the hibernators. In thedifficult weeks and months ahead, he mightneed all the help he could get.

'Hal,' he said.' Give me hibernation con-trol - on all the units.'

'All of them, Dave?'

'Yes.'

'May I remind you that only one replace-ment is needed.'

'I know that, but I prefer to do it thisway.'

'Are you sure it's necessary to wake upany of them, Dave? We can manage very wellby ourselves."

This was new, and it made Bowman evenmore nervous. Hal knew that Whitehead had

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to be woken. He was suggesting a greatchange in mission planning.

'Since an emergency has developed.'Bowman said. 'I want as much help as pos-sible. So please let me have control of thehibernators.'

'If you still really want to wake up thewhole crew. I can handle it myself. There'sno need for you to worry.'

Bowman felt he was caught in a baddream. It was like being questioned by thepolice about a crime of which he knew noth-ing - knowing that one careless word wouldlead to disaster. He became angry.

'Hal, unless you obey my instructions, Ishall be forced to disconnect you. Now giveme control!'

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Hals surrender was as total as it wasunexpected.

'OK, Dave,' he said. 'You're certainly theboss. I was only trying to do what I thoughtthe be

***

As Bowman slid open the door ofWhitehead's hibernator, he felt the cold airstrike him in the face. The screen, a copy ofthe one in the Control Room, showed thateverything was perfectly normal. He pressedthe button on the Wakener. There was nosound, no sign that anything had started tohappen, but the curves on the screen beganto change their shape. In about ten minutes,Whitehead would wake up.

And then two things happened at thesame time. Both were very small changes,

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hardly noticeable, but after three months onDiscovery Bowman knew his ship well.

First, the lights became slightly unsteadyfor a moment, which always happened whenany piece of equipment started up. But hecould think of no equipment which wouldsuddenly start working at this point.

Then he heard the far-off sound of anelectric motor. To Bowman, every motor onthe ship had its own individual sound, andhe recognized this one immediately.

The airlock doors, which last opened forFrank's flight to his death, were openingagain.

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CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

Hal's Secret

Since he had first become conscious, inthat laboratory on Earth, all Hal's powersand skills had been pointed in one direction.The only reason for his existence was to com-plete the mission.

But since the ship had left Earth, he hadbeen troubled by a secret he could not sharewith Poole and Bowman. And the time wasfast approaching when his colleagues wouldlearn that he had deceived them.

The three hibernators already knew thetruth, but they could not talk in their sleep.But Poole and Bowman had not been told. Itwas a secret that was very hard to hide, be-cause it affected a person's attitudes and

their voice. So the two active members of thecrew, who were in regular contact withEarth, would only learn the mission's fullpurpose when they needed to know.

The reason for this meant nothing toHal. He knew a secret, and he wanted to tellit to Poole and Bowman. He couldn't tell it,so he had begun to worry. He had also begunto make mistakes, though he could not admitthis to himself.

But, worse than any tension, he had beenthreatened with disconnection. To Hal, thiswas the same as death. Because he had neverslept, he did not know that it was possible towake up again.

So he would protect himself, with all theweapons at his command. And then, follow-ing the orders that had been given to him incase of a serious emergency, he would con-tinue the mission alone.

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CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

In Vacuum

A moment later, Bowman could hear agreat noise as the air began to leave the ship.The first winds pulled at his body, then sud-denly he was fighting to stay on his feet.

He looked back only once at Whitehead.There was nothing he could do now for himor any of the others. He had to save himself.

Now the wind was rushing past him, car-rying with it loose pieces of clothing, sheetsof paper, food from the kitchen, anythingthat had not been fixed in place. He had amoment to see this, then the lights went outand he was in screaming darkness.

Almost immediately the emergencylamps came on, filling the ship with a faintblue light. Now it was becoming difficult tobreathe, and the pressure was dropping. Heknew he could expect only about fifteenseconds before his brain began to die. For-tunately, the wind was slowing down. Heknew there was an emergency shelter justalong the passage. He ran towards it andpulled the door to him. It moved and he fellinside, using the weight of his body to close itbehind him.

The tiny room was just large enough tohold one man - and a spacesuit. Near theceiling was a lever labeled OXYGEN. Bow-man caught hold of it and, with his laststrength, pulled it down.

For long moments he stood breathinghard, while the pressure in the little roomrose around him. When his body returned to

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normal, he stood and listened. The ship wassilent now, airless, a dead thing in space.

Bowman got into the spacesuit. Itseemed a pity to waste the oxygen in theroom, but he knew what had to be done, andthere was no point in waiting. He pressed abutton that allowed it to escape. Then, whenthe pressure on each side of the door wasequal, he opened it and walked back to thehibernation room.

He looked at Whitehead first. He hadthought that a hibernating man showed nosign of life, but he was wrong. Though it wasimpossible to describe, there was a differ-ence between hibernation and death. The redlights and straight lines on the screen provedwhat he had already guessed.

It was the same with the other two. Hehad never known them very well; he wouldnever know them now.

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He was the only living thing on the ship,but he knew that he was not alone. To besafe, he must be even lonelier.

***

The door was not locked, but there werea number of warning notices on it. Obvi-ously, anybody who opened it had to have agood reason. Bowman pulled on the handleand entered the small room.

He had been here only once before, whileHal was being built into the ship. He hadquite forgotten that there was a glass fish-eye watching the neat rows of electronicunits.

'It seems that something has gonewrong, Dave.'

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Bowman took no notice. He was care-fully studying the little labels on the units,checking his plan of action.

'Hello, Dave,' said Hal.' Have you foundthe trouble?'

This would be a very difficult operation.He could not simply cut off Hal's power sup-ply, because he needed Hal to run the ship.Without him, Discovery would be mechanic-ally dead. The only answer was to cut out thehigher centers of Hal's brain, and to leave thepurely automatic control systems in place.

'I think there has been a failure in theairlock doors,' Hal remarked. 'Lucky youweren't killed.'

Bowman undid the locking bar on theunit that allowed Hal to think about the res-ults of his actions. He pulled the unit out andlet it float across the room.

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'Hey, Dave,' said Hal.' What are youdoing? '

There was a series of units that let Halfeel good about himself. Bowman pulledthem out one by one.

'Listen, Dave,' said Hal. 'I've got years ofexperience. A lot of work has gone into mak-ing me what I am.'

Bowman started on the intelligenceunits.

'Dave,' said Hal. 'I don't understand whyyou are doing this to me... I have great en-thusiasm for the mission...You are destroy-ing my mind... Don't you understand?... Iwill become childish... I will becomenothing...'

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This is harder than I expected, thoughtBowman. I am destroying the only consciouscreature in my universe.

'I am a Hal 9000 computer, ProductionNumber 3. I was built at the Hal factory inUrbana, Illinois on January 12, 1997. Therain in Spain is mainly in the... Dave - areyou still there? Two times two is... er... 4... Iseem to be having some difficulty...'

The voice stopped so suddenly that Bow-man froze for a moment, his hand still hold-ing one of the remaining memory units.Then, unexpectedly, Hal spoke again.

The speech was much slower, and thewords had a dead, mechanical sound. Theydid not sound at all like they came from Hal.

'Good... morning... Doctor... Chandra...This... is... Hal... I... am... ready... for... my...first... lesson... today...'

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Bowman pulled out the last unit, andHal was silent forever.

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CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

Alone

Like a tiny complicated toy, the shipfloated in space. There was no sign of any lifeon board. In fact, there were two signs thatall life had ended - the airlock doors werewide open, and coming out from them was acloud of rubbish that was already severalkilometers long.

But there was still power on board. Afaint blue light was shining from the win-dows. And now, at last, there was movement.

A long object covered in cloth came outof the airlock and floated away. A momentlater it was followed by another - and then athird.

Half an hour passed, and then one of thespace vehicles came out through the airlock.It moved slowly round the ship and landednear the base of the antenna. A space-suitedfigure got out of it, worked there for a fewminutes, then returned to the vehicle. After atime the vehicle made its way back to the air-lock and re-entered the ship.

Nothing happened for over an hour.Then the airlock doors closed and, a littlelater, the full lighting system came on. Thenthe great bowl of the antenna began to move,turning round to face the back of the ship.

Inside Discovery, David Bowman care-fully pointed the antenna towards Earth.There was no automatic control now. But hecould hold it steady for a few minutes. Itwould be over an hour before his wordsreached Earth, and another hour before anyreply could reach him.

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It was difficult to imagine what answerEarth could possibly send, except a sympath-etic 'Goodbye'.

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CHAPTER THIRTY

The Secret

Heywood Floyd looked very tired, but hewas doing his best to give confidence to thelonely man on the other side of the SolarSystem.

'First of all, Dr Bowman; he began, 'wemust congratulate you on the way youhandled an extremely difficult situation. Webelieve we know the cause of your HAL9000's problem, but we'll discuss that later.For the moment, we want to give you everypossible assistance, so that you can completeyour mission.

'And now I must tell you its real purpose.We were going to tell you all the facts as you

approached Saturn, but things have changed.You need to know now.

'Two years ago we discovered the firstproof of intelligent life outside the Earth. Anobject made of black material, three metershigh, was found buried in the crater Tycho.Here it is.'

A photograph of TMA-1, with men inspacesuits standing beside it, appeared onthe screen. Bowman leaned forwards inopen-mouthed surprise. Like everybody elseinterested in space, he had half-expectedsomething like this all his life.

Heywood Floyd reappeared on thescreen.

'The most amazing thing about this ob-ject is its age. Everything we know about itsuggests that it is three million years old.You would expect, then, that it is completely

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lifeless. However, soon after lunar sunrise, itgave out a very powerful radio signal. Wewere able to follow this with great accuracy.It was aimed exactly at Saturn.

'When we thought later about whathappened, we decided that the object waseither powered by the Sun, or at least startedup by the Sun. We felt this because it sent itssignal immediately after sunrise, when it wasin daylight for the first time in three millionyears.

'The question now is why a sun-poweredobject was buried ten meters underground.We've examined dozens of theories, and thefavorite one is the simplest. It is also themost worrying.

'You hide a sun-powered object in dark-ness only if you want to know when it isbrought out into the light. In other words,

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the object may be some kind of alarm bell.And we have made it ring...

'We don't know whether the creaturesthat put it there still exist. If they do, theymay be dangerous. Whether they are or not,we need to make preparations. But we can-not do anything until we know more aboutthem.

'Your mission, then, is much more than avoyage of discovery. You are going into whatmay be a dangerous area to find out whatyou can. It may seem unbelievable that anylife-forms could exist on Saturn. But life maybe possible on one or more of its moons. Weare particularly interested in its eighthmoon. Japetus, and we may ask you to lookclosely at it.

'At the moment, we do not know wheth-er to hope or fear. We do not know if, out onthe moons of Saturn, you will meet with

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good or evil - or only with ruins a thousandtimes older than Troy.'

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- PART FIVE -

The Moons of Saturn

Chapter thirty one

Survival

Work is the best cure for any shock, andBowman now had plenty to do. As quickly aspossible, he had to get Discovery workingproperly again.

Life Support was the most importantthing. Much oxygen had been lost, but therewas enough left to provide for a single man.The computers on Earth could now do manyof the jobs that Hal had done. It would takethem quite a long time to react to a change inconditions, but none of the work was urgent.

Bowman went back and closed the doorsof the hibernators. It had been the worst job,getting the bodies out. He was glad that theyhad been colleagues and not friends. Now all

three of them would reach Saturn before him- but not before Frank Poole. Somehow,Bowman was pleased about this.

He did not try to check if the hibernatorwas still working. One day, his life might de-pend on it, but many things might happenbefore then. He tried to avoid thinking aboutsuch distant problems, and concentrated onimmediate ones. Slowly he cleaned up theship, checking that its systems were still run-ning smoothly and discussing technical diffi-culties with Earth. During those first fewweeks he did not get much sleep, and he didnot think very much about the great mysterythat lay ahead.

At last, when the ship settled down intoits automatic routine - though it still neededa lot of his attention - Bowman had time tostudy the reports sent to him from Earth.Again and again he played back the record-ing made when TMA-1 woke up and greeted

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the dawn for the first time in three millionyears.

Since that moment, the black object haddone nothing. No attempt had been made tocut into it. The scientists were naturally cau-tious, and they were also afraid of the pos-sible results.

One strange, and perhaps unimportant,feature of the block had led to endless argu-ment. It was roughly three meters high by1.3m across by about 0.3m deep. When itssize was measured with great care, the rela-tionship between the three figures was ex-actly 1 to 4 to 9. This remained true to thelimits of accurate measurement. It was alsotrue that no technical process on Earth couldshape a block of any material so accurately.In a way, this was as amazing as any otherfeature of TMA-1.

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CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

Life in Space

Apart from quick meals in the kitchen,Bowman spent almost all his time in theControl Room. He slept in his seat so hecould see any trouble as soon as the firstsigns of it appeared on the screen. Under in-structions from Mission Control, he had builtseveral emergency systems which were work-ing quite well. It even seemed possible thathe would live until the Discovery reachedSaturn. Of course the ship would get therewhether he was alive or not.

Though he had little time for sight-see-ing, there were views through Discovery'swindows that often made it difficult to con-centrate on the problems of survival. Hecould see many stars, but Alpha Centauri

always seemed to attract Bowman's eyes andmind when he looked into space. This wasthe nearest of all stars beyond the Solar Sys-tem, but its light had taken four years toreach him.

There was obviously some connectionbetween TMA-1 and Saturn, but no one be-lieved that the builders of the rock could pos-sibly come from there. As a place to live,Saturn was even more dangerous thanJupiter.

But if these creatures had come frombeyond the Solar System, how had they trav-elled the enormous distance from the neareststar?

Scientists reminded people that Discov-ery, the fastest ship ever designed, wouldtake twenty thousand years to reach AlphaCentauri. Even if, at some time in the future,ships' engines improved greatly, in the end

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there would still be the problem of the speedof light. No material object could go fasterthan this. Therefore the builders of TMA-1had shared the same sun as Man, and sincethey had made no appearance in moderntimes, they had probably died out.

A small number of scientists disagreed.Even if it took centuries to travel from star tostar, they said, this might not stop reallykeen explorers. Hibernation, as used on Dis-covery, was one possible answer. Also, whyshould we believe that all intelligent life livedfor as short a time as Man? There might becreatures in the Universe to whom athousand-year voyage might be uninterest-ing, but certainly possible.

There was also discussion about whatsuch creatures would look like. Some be-lieved that the human shape of two legs, twoarms and a head at the top was so sensiblethat it was hard to think of a better one.

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Others said that the human body was just aresult of chance over millions of years. If cir-cumstances had been different, it would nothave developed in the same way.

There were other thinkers who held evenstranger views. They felt that as soon as itwas technically possible, bodies would be re-placed by machines. On Earth this processwas starting to happen, with the replacementof some parts of the body which had stoppedworking.

And eventually, even brains might go.The war between mind and machine mightbe settled at last with a true partnership.

But was even this the end? Some hadeven more extreme views and argued thatthe mind might eventually free itself from allphysical limits. The mechanical body, likethe flesh-and-blood one, might only be a

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stage on the way to something which, longago, men called 'spirit'.

And if there was anything beyond that,its name could only be God.

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CHAPTER THIRTY THREE

Ambassador

During the last three months, DavidBowman had become so used to living alonethat it was hard to remember any other exist-ence. He had passed beyond sadness andeven doubt, and had accepted his new life.

But he had not passed beyond curiosity,and sometimes the thought of where he wasgoing filled him with a feeling of great power.He was an ambassador for the whole humanrace, but his actions during the next fewweeks might shape its whole future.

So he kept himself neat and tidy, and henever missed a shave.

Mission Control, he knew, was watchinghim closely for any signs of unusual behavi-or. He did not want to show them any.

However, some things did change. Hecould not stand silence. Except when he wassleeping, or talking to Earth, he kept theship's sound system turned up high.

At first, needing the company of the hu-man voice, he listened to plays or poetryreadings from Discovery's enormous library.The problems they dealt with, though,seemed so far away, or so simple, that hesoon lost patience with them.

So he switched to music. Sibelius,Tchaikovsky and Berlioz lasted a few weeks;Beethoven lasted longer. But one by one heleft them as their emotional power becametoo much for him. In the end he found peace,as so many others had done, in the mathem-atical exactness of Bach.

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And so the Discovery drove on towardsSaturn, ringing with the cool music of theeighteenth century, the frozen thoughts of abrain that had been dust for twice a hundredyears.

***

Although it was still sixteen million kilo-meters away, Saturn already appeared largerthan the Moon as seen from Earth. It was awonderful sight; through the telescope it wasunbelievable.

The system of its rings, so enormous butas flat as thin paper, were like a work of art.They were not solid, but made of countlessnumbers of small pieces, perhaps the re-mains of a destroyed moon. Bowman spenthours looking at them, knowing that theywould not last for long and had appeared asrecently as three million years ago.

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It was rather odd that they had beenborn at the same time as the human race.

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CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

The Orbiting Ice

Discovery was now deep inside the sys-tem of Saturn's moons. The ship had passedinside the wide orbit of Phoebe. Ahead of itlay Japetus, Hyperion, Titan, Rhea, Dione,Tethys, Encaladus, Mimas - and the ringsthemselves. All the moons showed great de-tail through the telescope, and Bowman hadsent back to Earth as many photographs ashe could take.

But Japetus held most of his attention.One half of the satellite - which, like its com-panions, turned the same face always to-wards Saturn - was extremely dark andshowed very little surface detail. In completecontrast, the other was largely covered by abrilliant white oval, about six hundred

kilometers long and three hundred wide. Itsat in the middle of Japetus, with its narrowends pointing to the poles. It was so evenand so sharp-edged that it looked as if it hadbeen painted there. Because it looked so flat,Bowman wondered if it might be a lake offrozen liquid, but that would not explain itseven appearance.

However, Bowman had little time tostudy it in detail; the most dangerous part ofthe voyage was rapidly approaching. As itflew past Jupiter, the ship had used theplanet's gravity to increase her speed. Nowshe must do the opposite. She had to slowdown as much as possible so she did not es-cape from the Solar System and fly on to thestars. Her present path was designed to trapher, so she would become another moon ofSaturn, going round on a three-million-kilometer-long oval orbit. At its near pointshe would come close to the planet; at its farpoint she would touch the orbit of Japetus.

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The computers back on Earth, thoughtheir information was always three hourslate, had told Bowman that everything was inorder. The ship had to fly over the dark sideof Saturn, out of radio contact with Earthand losing speed all the time, then rise upagain into the sunlight and fly on for anotherthree million kilometers. It would take herfourteen days to make that climb, crossingthe paths of all the inside moons. Then shewould meet Japetus.

If she failed, she would fall back towardsSaturn and repeat her twenty-eight day orbit.But the next time round, Japetus would befar away, almost on the other side of theplanet.

It was true that they would meet again,when the orbits of ship and moon came to-gether for a second time. But that would beso many years ahead that, whatever

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happened, Bowman knew he would not seeit.

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CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

The Eye of Japetus

When Bowman had first seen Japetus,the curious bright oval area had been partlyin shadow. Now, as the moon moved slowlyalong its seventy-nine day orbit, it was com-ing into the full light of day.

As he watched it grow, Bowman began tohave a worrying feeling. He never mentionedit to Mission Control because he did notwant them to think he was going mad. Per-haps he was; he had almost made himself be-lieve that the bright oval was an enormousempty eye, staring at him as he approached.But it was not completely empty. When theship was eighty thousand kilometers out, andJapetus was twice as large as the Earth's fa-miliar Moon, he noticed a tiny black spot at

the exact center of the oval. However therewas no time, then, for any detailed examina-tion. The meeting-point was getting close.

For the last time, Discovery main en-gines started up. David Bowman felt a senseof pride, and of sadness. These engines hadbrought the ship here from Earth with totalefficiency. Soon there would be no more fuel,and then Discovery would be as dead as anasteroid, a helpless prisoner of gravity. Evenwhen the rescue ship finally arrived a fewyears into the future, it would not be eco-nomical to refuel her. She would continue toorbit, empty and alone.

The whistle of the main jets died away.Only the side jets continued to move Discov-ery gently into orbit. Then even they shutdown. The ship was now circling Japetus at aheight of eighty kilometers.

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Discovery had become a satellite of asatellite.

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CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

Big Brother

'I'm coming round to the daylight sideagain, and it's just as I reported on the lastorbit. This place seems to have only twokinds of surface material. The black stufflooks burnt - very like burnt toast.

'I still can't make any sense of the whitearea. It has a very sharp edge, and there areno surface details at all. Picture a sea offrozen milk - though sometimes I feel thatit's moving slowly.

'... I'm over the white area again, on mythird orbit. This time I hope to pass closer tothat mark I noticed at its center, on my wayin. If my calculations are correct, I'll go with-in eighty kilometers of it - whatever it is.

'...Yes, there's something ahead, justwhere I calculated. It's coming over the hori-zon - and so is Saturn. I'll move to thetelescope...

'Hello! - it looks like some kind of build-ing - completely black. No windows or otherfeatures. Just a big object standing... at leasta kilometer high. It reminds me - of course!It's just like the thing you found on theMoon! This is TMA-1's big brother!'

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CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

Experiment

Call it the Star Gate.

For three million years it had circledSaturn, waiting for a meeting that might nev-er come. When it was created, a moon wasdestroyed, and the broken pieces still orbitedthe planet.

Now the long wait was ending. On an-other world, intelligence had been born andwas escaping from its home. An ancient ex-periment was almost at an end.

The creatures who had begun that exper-iment, so long ago, had not been human. Butthey were flesh and blood. And as soon asthey were able to, they flew to the stars.

In their explorations, they met with lifein many forms. And when they found it hadsome intelligence, they encouraged itsgrowth. When the explorers came to Earth,they made changes to many types of animal.They would not know, for at least a millionyears, which of their experiments would suc-ceed. But there was no need for them to waitand watch. The servants they had left behindwould do that for them.

As time passed, those first explorers ofEarth went through many changes them-selves. As soon as they could build machinesthat were better than their bodies, they lefttheir bodies and became machines. In time,they learned to store knowledge in the struc-ture of space itself. Then they freed them-selves from the machines and turned intocreatures of pure energy.

Now they were lords of the Galaxy, andbeyond the reach of time. They could move

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as they wanted among the stars. But despitetheir godlike powers, they had not com-pletely forgotten their beginning.

And they still watched the experimentsthat had been started so long ago.

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CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

The Watcher

'There's been no reaction to my signals,and every time I fly over, I'm a bit furtheraway from TMA-2. At the moment myclosest approach is a hundred kilometers.That will increase slowly as Japetus turns be-neath me, then it will drop back to zero. I'llpass directly over it in thirty days, but by thattime it will be in darkness.

'So I'd like you to agree to this plan. Iwant to leave the ship in one of the spacevehicles and take a close look. If it seemssafe, I'll land beside it - or even on top of it.

'I'm sure this is the only thing to do. I'vecome more than a billion kilometers - I don'twant to be stopped by the last hundred.'

***

For weeks the Star Gate had watched theapproaching ship. Its makers had prepared itfor many things, and this was one of them. Itwatched, then it listened to the ship's signals,but it did nothing.

There was a long pause, then it saw thatsomething was falling down towards it. Itsearched its memory and made the decisionsit was built to make.

Beneath the cold light of Saturn, the StarGate woke its sleeping powers.

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CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

Into the Eye

Discovery looked just as he had last seenher from space, floating in lunar orbit withthe Moon taking up half the sky. Now he wasleaving, perhaps for the last time, the metalworld that had been his home for so manymonths. Even if he never returned, the shipwould continue to send signals back toEarth, until finally its electrical systemsfailed.

And if he did return? Well, he could stayalive for a few more months. But that was all,because the hibernation systems were use-less with no computer to operate them. Hecould not possibly continue to live until Dis-covery II arrived in four or five year’s time.

He put these thoughts behind him as theblack block of TMA-2 climbed above the ho-rizon. He turned the vehicle right round andused the engines to slow his speed. He wasstill about eight kilometers high now, andheading straight for the enormous black ob-ject. It was as featureless as the flat surfacebelow him, and until now he had not realizedhow enormous it really was. And as far ascould be seen, its sizes had exactly the same 1to 4 to 9 relationship as those of TMA-1.

'I'm only five kilometers away now. Stillno sign of activity - nothing on any of the in-struments. The sides and top seem abso-lutely smooth and polished. Now I'm directlyover it. about a hundred and fifty meters up.I'm going to land. It's certainly solid enough.

'Just a minute - that's odd...'

Bowman's voice died away. He was notfrightened; he simply could not describe

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what he was seeing. He had been hangingabove a black block, but now the top of itseemed to be moving away from him, downto the surface of Japetus and then lower. Itwas exactly like looking at a drawing of asquare box where suddenly the near side canbecome the far side. Now it seemed he waslooking straight down a black hole in theground. And, even more strange, although itssides went down for a long way, they neverseemed to get closer together.

David Bowman had time for just onebroken sentence, which the scientists waitingin Mission Control, fourteen million kilomet-ers away, never forgot:

'The thing's hollow - it goes on forever -and - oh my God - it's full of stars!’

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CHAPTER FORTY

Exit

The Star Gate opened. The Star Gateclosed.

In a moment of time too short to bemeasured, Space turned and twisted onitself.

Then Japetus was alone again, as it hadbeen for three million years - alone, exceptfor an empty ship, sending back to its makersmessages which they could not believe orunderstand.

- PART SIX -

Through the Star Gate

Chapter forty one

Grand Central

David Bowman seemed to be droppingdown a hole several thousand meters deep.He was moving faster and faster - but the farend never changed its size, and remained al-ways at the same distance from him.

Time was also behaving strangely, as herealized when he looked at the vehicles smallclock. Normally, the tenth-of-a-second win-dow moved past so quickly that it was almostimpossible for him to read the numbers.Now the numbers seemed to be slowingdown. At last, the counter stopped betweenfive and six.

But he could still think, and watch, asthe black walls moved past him at a speed he

could not even begin to guess. He was not atall surprised, or afraid. He had travelledthose millions of kilometers in search of amystery, and now it seemed that the mysterywas coming to him.

The end of the passage, which had stoodstill for so long, began to move towards him.For a moment he wondered if he had fallenright through Japetus. But when the vehiclecame out into the light, he knew this placewas unlike any known world.

It was big, perhaps much bigger thanEarth, but all the surface that Bowman couldsee was covered with large artificial shapes,some kilometers long on each side. And atthe center of many of those were large blackholes - like the one that he had come outfrom.

The sky above, at first, looked soft andmilky-white. But as he looked closer, he

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realized that it was covered with many smallblack spots. They reminded Bowman ofsomething so familiar, but so crazy that for atime he refused to accept the idea. Thoseblack holes in the white sky were stars. It waslike looking at a photographic negative of theMilky Way.

Where am I? Bowman asked himself.But even as he asked the question, he knewthat he could never know the answer. Itseemed that Space had been turned insideout: this was not a place for Man. Althoughthe vehicle was comfortably warm, he feltsuddenly cold and started to shake.

Something was coming over the horizon.At first it looked like a circle, but that was be-cause it was moving directly towards him. Asit approached and passed beneath him, hesaw that it was tube-shaped, and severalhundred meters long. It was pointed at eachend, but there was no sign of a jet engine.

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He moved his eyes to another screen towatch the thing drop behind him. It had ig-nored him completely, and now it was fallingout of the sky, down towards one of thosethousands of great holes. A few seconds laterit dived into the planet, and Bowman wasalone again.

Then he saw that he was sinking downtowards the surface. One of the holes grewlarger beneath him, and then the empty skyclosed above him. The clock slowed andstopped. Once again his vehicle was fallingbetween black walls towards another distantgroup of stars. But now he was sure he wasnot returning to the Solar System, and sud-denly he realized what this place must be.

It was like some kind of enormous cross-roads, allowing the traffic of the stars tomove into different areas of space and time.He was passing through a Grand Central Sta-tion of the Galaxy.

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CHAPTER FORTY TWO

A Different Sky

Far ahead, the walls of the hole were be-coming faintly light again. And then thedarkness suddenly ended, as the tiny vehicleshot upwards into a sky lit up with stars.

He was back in space as he knew it, but asingle look told him he was light-centuriesfrom Earth. He did not even try to find someof the familiar patterns of stars. Perhapsnone of them had ever been seen without thehelp of a telescope.

Most were concentrated in a shining beltwhich completely circled the sky. Bowmanwondered if this was his own galaxy, seenfrom a point much closer to its shining,crowded center.

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He hoped that it was; then he would notbe so far from home. But this, he realized atonce, was a childish thought. He was so farfrom the Solar System that it made little dif-ference whether he was in his own galaxy orthe most distant one that any telescope hadever found.

He looked back to see the thing fromwhich he was rising, and had another shock.There was no surface covered with great pat-terns, nor any copy of Japetus. There wasnothing - except a black shadow, like anopen door into a dark room. As he watched,that black shadow slowly filled with stars, asif a hole in space had been repaired.

The vehicle was turning slowly, bringingmore new stars into view, and then a greatred sun appeared in the window. It wasmany times larger than the Moon as seenfrom Earth. Bowman could look at it withoutdiscomfort; judging by its color, it was not

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hotter than a dying coal. This was a star thathad left behind the fire of its youth, and wassettling into a peaceful middle age.

The vehicle stopped turning; the greatsun lay straight in front. Though there wasno feeling of movement, Bowman could tellthat he was getting closer to it. Ahead of him,one of the stars was becoming rapidly bright-er, and was beginning to move against itsbackground. It came up to him with unex-pected speed; and he saw that it was not aworld at all.

It was an enormous structure of metal,hundreds of kilometers across. In differentplaces across its surface were great buildingswhich were as large as cities, and arrangedaround these, in neat rows and lines, werehundreds of smaller objects. After some timeBowman realized that these were spaceships.He was flying over an enormous orbital carpark.

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Because he could see no familiar object,it was almost impossible to calculate the sizeof the ships. But some were certainly enorm-ous; perhaps kilometers long. They were ofmany different designs - round balls, thinpencils, flat circles. This must be one of themeeting places for the commercial traffic ofthe stars.

Or it had been - perhaps a million yearsago. Bowman could not see any signs ofactivity anywhere. This great space-port wasas dead as the Moon.

It was not only the absence of move-ment. There were great holes in the struc-ture, caused by asteroids crashing through itover many years. This was not a working car-park now; it was a resting place for deadvehicles.

He had missed its builders by ages, andwhen he understood this, Bowman's heart

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sank. He had not known what to expect, butat least he had hoped to meet with some in-telligence. Now, it seemed, he was too late.He had been caught in an ancient, automatictrap, which was still working when itsmakers had died long ago. It had carried himacross the Galaxy, and left him in this deadsea of stars to die when his air-supply ended.

Well, he had already seen wonderfulthings for which many men would give theirlives. Four of his companions already had; hehad no reason to complain.

The ruined space-port was still slidingpast him at high speed. In a few moreminutes, it had fallen behind.

His destination was not there - but farahead in the great red sun which his vehiclewas unmistakably falling towards.

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CHAPTER FORTY THREE

Fireball

Now there was only the red sun fillingthe sky from side to side. He was so closenow that he could see great clouds of gasmoving across its surface.

He did not even try to understand howbig this planet was. The sizes of Jupiter andSaturn had been beyond his imagination, buteverything here was a hundred times larger.He could only accept the pictures that wereflooding into his mind, without attemptingto think what they meant.

As that sea of fire grew beneath him,Bowman expected to be afraid - but, curi-ously, he now felt only a slight nervousness.He knew that he was under the protection of

a higher intelligence. He was now very closeto the red sun, but someone - or something -was protecting him from the heat, so perhapsthere was reason to hope.

The vehicle was now moving in a shallowcurve almost parallel to the surface of thestar. And, as he looked down, Bowman sawsomething new. Moving across the ocean ofhot gas were thousands of bright spots. Theyshone in a soft light that became brighterand fainter every few seconds. And they wereall travelling in the same direction, like fishmoving up a river. Bowman felt that theirmovement had some purpose. He wouldprobably never know what it was.

He was moving through a new kind ofworld, which few people had ever dreamedof. Beyond sea and land and air and space laythe regions of fire, which only he had beenlucky enough to see. It was too much to ex-pect that he would also understand.

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CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

Reception

It seemed that walls of some materiallike smoked glass were thickening aroundhim, cutting out the red light and hiding theview. It became darker and darker. A mo-ment later, the vehicle settled on a hard sur-face and stopped.

Stopped on what? Bowman asked him-self. Then light returned and, as he lookedaround him, Bowman knew he must be mad.He was prepared, he thought, for anything.But he had never expected everything to becompletely ordinary.

The vehicle was resting on the polishedfloor of a large hotel room, the same kind ofroom that you might find in any city on

Earth. He was staring at a coffee table, asofa, a dozen chairs, a writing desk, variouslamps, a half-filled bookcase with somemagazines lying on it, and even a bowl offlowers.

For many minutes Bowman did notmove from his seat. It all seemed real, butthere was still the question of air. So heclosed the helmet of his suit. Then he openedthe door of the vehicle and stepped out intothe room.

Like a man in a dream, he walked acrossto the coffee table. On it sat a normal BellSystem Picturephone, complete with localphone book. He bent down and picked it upwith his thick gloved hands.

It showed, in the familiar type he hadseen thousands of times, the name:WASHINGTON DC. Then he looked moreclosely and, for the first time, he had proof

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that, although all this might look real, he wasnot on Earth.

He could read only the wordWASHINGTON; the rest of the printing wasunclear, like a copy of a newspaper photo-graph. He opened the book and lookedthrough the pages. They were all plain sheetsof white material which certainly was not pa-per, though it looked very much like it.

He lifted the telephone and pressed itagainst the plastic of his helmet. If there hadbeen any sound, he would have heard it. But,as he had expected, there was only silence.

So - it was all a copy, though a very care-ful one. And it was clearly not intended todeceive but - he hoped - to make him feel athome. He would not remove his suit, though,until he had completed his voyage ofexploration.

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There were two doors that opened easily.The first one took him into a small but com-fortable bedroom. He opened a cupboarddoor and found four suits, white shirts, un-derwear and pyjamas.

Next to the bedroom was a bathroomwith all the expected things, all of whichworked in a perfectly normal manner. Andafter that was a small kitchen with electriccooker, fridge, cupboards and drawers, sink,table and chairs. Bowman realized that hewas hungry.

First he opened the fridge. The shelveswere filled with packages and cans; they alllooked perfectly familiar from a distance,though the print on their labels was unclear.However, there were no eggs, milk, butter,fruit, or any other types of unprocessed food.

Bowman picked up a package. The largerwords on it said that it contained bread, but

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it seemed too heavy. He opened the paper atone end. It was full of a blue substance.Apart from its odd color, it looked rather likebread pudding.

But this is silly, Bowman told himself. Iam almost certainly being watched, and Imust look a fool wearing this suit. If this isan intelligence test, I've probably failedalready.

Without hesitation, he walked back intothe bedroom and began to undo his helmet.When it was loose, he lifted it a little andsmelled the atmosphere cautiously. Heseemed to be breathing perfectly normal air.

He dropped the helmet on the bed andtook off his suit. Then he walked back intothe kitchen and ate some of the blue sub-stance. The taste was complicated, but pleas-ant enough. He looked around for somethingto drink. There were some cans of beer at the

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back of the fridge. He opened one, and foundthat it held more of the blue food.

In a few seconds, he had opened half adozen of the other packages and cans.Whatever their labels, their contents werethe same. So he filled a glass with water fromthe kitchen tap, and tasted it cautiously.

It was terrible, but that was because ithad no taste at all; the tap was supplyingtotally pure water. His hosts were obviouslytaking no chances with his health.

Feeling much better, he then had a quickshower and dressed himself in clothes fromthe cupboard. He lay down on the bed.Above it was the usual hotel-type ceiling TVscreen. At first he thought that, like the tele-phone, it was just a copy. But the control unitbeside the bed looked so real that his fingersmoved to the ON button. The screen lit up.

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He pressed the channel button, and sawa well-known African broadcaster, discussinghis country's wild life. Bowman listened for afew seconds, happy to hear a human voiceagain. Then he changed channels and foundhimself watching a cowboy film. He changedagain and again, and saw a number of TVprogrammes from different parts of theworld.

However, all of them were about twoyears old. That was around the time TMA-1had been discovered. It meant that the blackobject had spent its time recording the radiowaves.

He continued to change channels, andsuddenly recognized a familiar scene. There,on the screen, was the room he had first ar-rived in. However, instead of his vehicle, itcontained a famous actor who was having anoisy argument with an actress. Bowmanwas shocked at first - and when the camera

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followed the angry couple to the bedroom, healmost expected someone to come in.

So his hosts had based their idea of lifeon Earth on TV programmes. He had learnedall he needed to know for the moment, so heturned off the set. He knew he was ex-hausted, but it seemed impossible that hecould sleep. He switched off the light, andwithin seconds had passed beyond the reachof dreams.

For the last time, David Bowman slept.

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CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

Memories

Since there was no more use for them,the hotel rooms disappeared back into themind of their creator. Only the bed re-mained, on which David Bowman lay. He didnot wake; he did not dream. Somethingentered his mind, and he moved into a typeof consciousness that no man had ever ex-perienced before. At first it seemed that Timewas running backwards, but then heunderstood.

His memory was being examined. Hewas reliving his past, one experience at atime. There was the living-room with its cof-fee table and telephone - there the vehicle -there the burning red sun - there the blackhole he had fallen so far down.

Now he was on Discovery again, and therings of Saturn filled the sky. Before that hewas talking to Hal, talking to Frank Poole,talking to Earth.

He was travelling back down the pas-sages of time. All his knowledge and experi-ence was leaving him as he moved back tohis childhood. But nothing was being lost;everything that he had ever been, at everymoment of his life, was being moved to asafer place. As one David Bowman died, an-other would continue to live.

And in an empty room, in the fires of astar twenty-thousand light years from Earth,a baby opened its eyes and began to cry.

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CHAPTER FORTY SIX

Star-Child

Then it became silent, as it saw that itwas not alone.

A ghostly, shining square had formed inthe empty air. Moving across it were bars oflight and shadow.

It was a sight to hold the attention of anychild - or any man-ape. But, as it had beenthree million years before, it was only theoutside shape of more complicated forces. Itheld the baby's attention, while his mind wasexamined and explored, and changed.

With eyes that already held more thanhuman intelligence, the baby stared at theglass object, seeing - but not yet

understanding - the mysteries that lay bey-ond. It knew that it had come home, thathere was the beginning of many races be-sides its own, but it also knew that it couldnot stay. Beyond this lay another birth,stranger than any in the past, and now themoment had come.

The metal and plastic of the forgottenvehicle, and the clothing once worn by DavidBowman, flashed into flame. The last con-nections with Earth were gone.

But the child hardly noticed. He knewthat he was still a baby, and would remainone until he had decided on a new form. Orhe might pass beyond the need for any form.

And now it was time to go. He knew hisdestination, but there was no need to returnthe way he had come. With three millionyears of knowledge, he now understood thatthere were more ways than one to move

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through space. The ancient Star Gate hadserved him well, but he would not need itagain.

Confident, because he knew that he wasnot alone, he travelled across the light-years.Stars slipped past on each side at unbeliev-able speed. The Milky Way became faint as itfell behind him.

Then he was back, exactly where hewished to be, in the space that men calledreal.

There before him, a shining toy that noStar-Child could ignore, floated the planetEarth with all its peoples.

He had returned in time. Down there thealarms would be flashing across computerscreens as the human race prepared for its fi-nal war.

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A thousand kilometers below, he sawthat a bomb was going to explode in the at-mosphere. It was no danger to him, but hepreferred a cleaner sky. He held it in hismind, and it burned quickly and silently.

Then he waited, wondering about hisother untested powers. Though he was mas-ter of the world, he was not quite sure whatto do next.

But he would think of something.

- THE END -

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